COVID-19 Response

With no levy invoices being sent out in April, the business was supported by a grant from the Scottish Government’s BID Resilience Fund.

It has been an exceptionally difficult period for Edinburgh City Centre and we are very aware of the unprecedented actions many of our members have had to take.

In late March 2020 the Board of Essential Edinburgh made the decision to delay the sending out of levy invoices to our businesses as we realised the significant financial pressures and operational difficulties being faced by all businesses.

Essential Edinburgh took immediate steps as many of you did, furloughing two thirds of our staff and stopping all but essential expenditure.

With no levy invoices being sent out in April, the business was supported by a grant from the Scottish Government’s BID Resilience Fund, enabling the remaining core staff to deliver a series of short-term measures for our levy-payers. These measures included: • Providing business support for finding funds, grants & loans. • Creating one-stop-shop guidance documents for retail, hospitality & tourism businesses. • Continuing to run social content on @EdinCityCentre channels to keep shops, hospitality & tourism businesses in people’s minds; reminding residents what they were missing and could not wait to come back to. • Highlighting good news stories of our community pulling together and sharing these across all Essential Edinburgh managed channels. • Collection Pot – raising funds to say thank you to key workers of Edinburgh, which were loaded onto Edinburgh Gift Cards. Collaborative data projects with Edinburgh University and Edinburgh Council - providing analysis and aids to planning Edinburgh’s post lockdown recovery.

Design and print of welcoming social distancing stickers for BID businesses to have free of charge for windows, internal floors, and pavements.

Re-design of planter covers in George Street and Rose Street to include social distancing messages within Edinburgh City Centre’s warm campaign style.

Re-design of St Andrew Square Garden entrance signs and waste bin covers to include the same social distancing messages being used by us across Edinburgh City Centre, creating uniformity of messaging.

Design of graphics for vacant units to keep the city centre an attractive location to visit and invest in.

In June we began to plan for enhanced lighting in the city centre for the 2020 Festive season, ensuring that the city centre would still be magical this Christmas.

Partnering ETAG, Edinburgh Council and other industry partners in “Forever Edinburgh” recovery PR, Media, and marketing campaign.

Working with The Edinburgh Locale to support businesses re-opening with freeto-use app.

Partnering REAL WORLD OUTCOMES on the development of trial areas in the BID for “My Covid Pass” to create a FeverFree high street.

The Clean Team continued to make the city centre welcoming and safe by disinfecting and deep cleaning the city centre. They also utilised the empty pavements to clean and remove chewing-gum.

We continued employment of our BID Cop to support city centre security.

We enhanced security presence in the city centre by using the Clean Team as extra staff looking after empty buildings. We continued to keep the information flowing to all our businesses through the Friday Weekly Email Update.

In June we began to plan for enhanced lighting in the city centre for the 2020 Festive season, ensuring that the city centre would still be magical this Christmas if Edinburgh’s Christmas activities - managed by Underbelly - were not to go ahead.

In May we began to lobby Edinburgh Council to increase available outside space for table and chairs licences.

We joined forces with London’s New West End BID, Scottish Retail Consortium and the International Retail Alliance to challenge the UK Government’s decision to abolish Tax-Free shopping on 31st December this year.

We continue to lobby Edinburgh Council to freeze or cap business rates for all hospitality sector businesses.