News & views

31 March 2020

The LLEP is leading on the Business cell of the Local Resilience Forum (LRF), a multi-agency group to co-ordinate the response to the impact that the COVID-19 virus is having in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The LLEP is leading on the Business cell of the Local Resilience Forum (LRF), a multi-agency group to co-ordinate the response to the impact that the COVID-19 virus is having in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The LLEP is also reporting directly to Government every Monday morning on the economic impact of the situation on the local area. With this in mind, it would very much appreciate any assistance that you may be able to provide in terms of gathering and feeding back intelligence. It has two key asks:

Please forward any intelligence to [email protected] by midday each Friday. Examples of the kind of information it is looking for relate to business activity, closures, job losses or new recruitment opportunities, business confidence etc. It would also be helpful to detail specifics such as locality and/or sectors affected.

Where businesses that you are working with are looking for support, please provide them with this link Access Growth Hub Business Support which will take them to a dedicated page on the Business Gateway Growth Hub site. The page provides a wealth of up to date information and details of how to access support through the LLEP’s team of Business Advisers. The service is fully-funded.

Business Impact
To aid the collection of business intelligence, the LLEP has developed an electronic COVID-19 Business Impact Form that will allow businesses to report their key concerns and while it appreciates that there are a number of websites that have support information, it feels that it is really important that it drives traffic to the Gateway website. In this way, it can provide to Government a collaborative account of the impact that the COVID-19 virus is having on individuals and businesses across Leicester and Leicestershire.

Please do not hesitate to contact the LLEP if there is anything urgent that needs escalating to the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) or to Government – some examples from last week included businesses being closed down, this was escalated to BEIS and the LRF. It would also would be great to hear from you if you wish to look at any tactical/operational collaboration opportunities.

Jane Cowley, Chair of Leicestershire Business Voice added: “We thank the LLEP for undertaking this massive challenge and welcome the support for the local business community during these trying economic times.”