Following our email on Tuesday, we are continuing to gather information that will help all our Otley businesses during these unprecedented and uncertain times.
Please take a few moments to review the information below and we will aim to bring you update on support that is available to you as soon as we are aware of it.
We are here to support all our businesses the best that we can. If you have any queries or ideas on how we can help, please email info@otleybid.co.uk.
Kind regards & stay safe, Tom Hatley
Chair – Otley Business Improvement District #ShopLocal #SupportLocal #SourceLocal #WorkingTogether
Please find below various information and support that you can access:
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Support for Businesses That Pay Little or No Business Rates
The government will provide additional funding for local authorities to support small businesses that already pay little or no business rates because of small business rate relief (SBBR). This will provide a one-off grant of £10,000 to businesses currently eligible for SBRR or rural rate relief, to help meet their ongoing business costs.
If your business is eligible for SBRR or rural rate relief, you will be contacted by your local authority – you do not need to apply.
Funding for the scheme will be provided to local authorities by government in early April. Guidance for local authorities on the scheme will be provided shortly.
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Chancellor’s Business Support Announcement 18/3/20
Following the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday relating to the Covid-19 outbreak, we are keen to ensure that you have access to Gov.uk information as soon as it is available. The relevant Gov.uk page can be found HERE.
Campaigns & Stakeholder Manager (North of England)
Prime Minister’s Office & Cabinet Office Communications
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Leeds Enterprise Partnership
Currently any businesses looking for help or support regarding the Coronavirus situation affecting businesses, eg. Statutory Sick Pay, Business Interruption Loan Scheme etc. can find information HERE, or for more support contact them via hotline – 0113 348 1818, email or website.
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 Otley Open for Business – Online Directory
To help encourage people to keep shopping local for as long as possible, we have created a page on ourwebsite where Otley residents can find support and home delivery services from our businesses all in one place. This will be updated every 24 hours so please check back for updates.
There is also a post at the top of our Facebook page providing the same information.
To help us promote your business please:
Head to our Facebook page and add information about your services, or if you’re not on Facebook
✴Tell us if you are offering alternative shopping hours for vulnerable groups.
✴Tell us if you are a restaurant, pub, cafe or any other food & drink business who are now offering a take-out service.
✴Tell us if you are offering a delivery service, giving us details of your product/service, location, details of how the delivery service will work, etc.
✴Tell us if you are providing any other service which can help our community & other businesses get through this with minimum fuss & contact.
✴Make sure you state your business name and location into your comment, along with your website address and tag in your Facebook page if you have one.
✅We will endeavour to add these details onto our website in an orderly manner to ensure that all the information is easily accessible and all in one place.
✅If you could please check with your neighbouring business if they have received this email. Unfortunately we do not yet have every single member’s email address on our mailing list. So please forward this to them or ask them to get in touch with their FULL NAME, BUSINESS NAME, ADDRESS and EMAIL ADDRESS. We can then add them to our database to receive email updates as we move forward.
✅Please tell your business contacts and your customers about what we are doing to ensure that we help as many people in our community as possible, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable at this stage.
✅We will also aim to share our website link to the Otley Our Town and Otley The Community We Live In Facebook Groups. If you are aware of any other groups that could benefit from this information, please share it. The more we all work together the better the outcome of this crisis will be.
✅We are working with Otley Chamber of Trade who is currently sharing as many of your Facebook and Twitter posts as possible. To help with this please tag @otleychamber (Facebook) @OtleyChamber(Twitter) into your posts to ensure they receive a notification.
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To enable social distancing, more and more businesses are turning to social media and online sites to deliver their services. For those businesses who do not have access to online payment systems and delivery platforms – the logistics and paying for these services is proving a tricky obstacle.
We have been approached by Dr Jackie Mulligan at online website www.shopappy.com, who is offering to help solve this problem by getting businesses online quickly, easily and absolutely FREE of charge for the next 3 monthswith a local delivery option within the community.
If enough businesses get in touch, a revised ShopAppy.com Otley site could be launched with online, collection and delivery.
