LETA Agenda

LETA Agenda | April 2020

John Patrinos
  • Chair: John Patrinos
  • Attendance: Victoria Hodges, Jason Broughton, Kevin Harris, Suzette Hibbert, Adrian Hobbs, Ashley Clarke, Dan James
  • Apologies: Sally Cleary, Rob Newman.
  • Meeting: via Zoom

Impact on the local economy and businesses of the Covid crisis. Including whether or not the chancellor’s promised financial support has arrived and its effect.

Some participants reported they were waiting for payment of business grants in the next couple of days. However, the grants were just seen as a way of stopping businesses closing immediately with the grave concern being expressed for the coming winter.

Concerns were also expressed at some businesses not qualifying, and at the time taken for the self-employed scheme to be rolled out by HMRC.

ENPA had spoken to the Heart of the Southwest LEP who were collections examples of problems. 

ACTIONS:

  1. Forward any examples to Dan James for collation.

After the crisis. What should we do? Including the ENPA Tourism Recovery Plan.

ENPA is working with a variety of partners to develop a recovery plan. This wasn’t helped by the inconsistent messages coming from central government. Despite this, an action plan will be developed but will need to be kept under continual review as the situation will be very fluid for a considerable time and the local economic consequences of the crisis are impossible to assess. However, it is possible that there will be an increase in holidaying in the UK that we will need to compete for a share of.

The results of the survey conducted by Jason were discussed.

The Visit Lynton & Lynmouth website numbers were down significantly because people weren’t looking to make any trips. However social media hits were up, perhaps due to people used it as a substitute for a real trip, perhaps due to wishful thinking.

It was agreed that efforts would be made to run the season far later than usual in the hope of making up some lost income. This would depend on when the lockdown was finally lifted. Businesses that would otherwise have reached their Vat limit would be likely to welcome this.

ACTIONS: 

1. Encourage business to prepare special offers so they are ready for the end of lockdown.

2. Jason/Victoria to join the ENPA recovery planning conference call at 10:30 on 15 April.

3. Create attractive social media content to encourage future visitors and increase our profile.

4. Cliff Railway to stay open far later in the year than usual, perhaps over the Christmas period.

5. Cliff Railway to be the focus of an “L&L is open” campaign, but this would require businesses at both ends to be open.

6. prepare to promote Halloween as an event similar to the normal Christmas effort. This would coincide with the Dark Skies Festival.

7. Launch Lyn in Bloom Competition.

8. Victoria to circulate info through her email list.

9. LETA to meet more frequently.

Next meeting:
on Zoom at 3 pm on 6th May 2020

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