On 3rd March 2022, the Lead Partner Coventry University Enterprises Ltd has organised a new Stakeholder Meeting online with representatives of the Coventry City Council and the Coventry & Warwickshire Growth Hub.
The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss Good Practices in terms of new business support programs specifically created as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the West Midlands Region. Out of all initiatives, the best two would be selected to be described in depth and included in the final Report summarising all extra RECREATE activities, published on the RECREATE website, and presented to all Partners and their stakeholders during the 1-hour Virtual Study Visit that will be organised by Coventry University Enterprises Ltd by the end of semester 8.
A lively discussion took place between the participants. Since the pandemic started, the businesses had to adapt very quickly to the new conditions and the Local Authorities concentrated on helping them to survive. The normal support programmes were not enough: cooperation between the local stakeholders grew exponentially and weekly catch-up meetings were set up in order to collect businesses issues and seek solutions. This developed a sort of centralised point of economic/business intelligence that has been used/could be used to design better future programmes. The delivery of existing programmes changed to adapt to the circumstances: for example, webinars started to be organised online and the attendance quadrupled (events in the past had 10-15 attendees, but during the pandemic they could easily gather 40-45 participants). This changes remained partially also once events could be organised in person again.
Several initiatives were put in place:
- A business support website was created in April 2020 to put all support in one place (this has now been fed also with information about Brexit and the latest trade implications of the war between Russia and Ukraine);
- Specialist Grants were initially offered to several sectors companies, including transport. Afterwards, these changed and were offered just to tourism companies. The aim was to improve digitalisation.
- A Government Loan Scheme was developed to provide grants to businesses who required support in terms of business loans.
- The Furlough Scheme, offered at national level, was designed from scratch in that period to help people. It was the first time that scheme had been created in the UK.
This session closed the meeting. The participants will send more information about the aforementioned initiatives and two of these will be selected for further investigation.