Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 16 December 2020 be confirmed.

Councillor Sue Burke declared a Personal Interest with regard to the agenda item titled 'Justin Brown - Assistant Director for Growth (Lincolnshire County Council)'.

Reason: She was employed by Lincolnshire County Council, although no decisions were being made this evening.

1)    To understand the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on businesses, identifying support already provided, whether there are any gaps and how the City Council can provide additional support.

2)    To understand the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on individuals from the perspective of jobs and employment and whether the City Council can provide additional support.

Jane Loffhagen, Chair of the Community Leadership Scrutiny Committee, opened the meeting and provided the Committee with a brief introduction of the topic for review which was the impact on businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She explained that the purpose of the review was to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it had affected businesses, whilst also identifying support already being provided and whether there were any gaps of which the City of Lincoln Council could provide further support. Not only would the review look at businesses, it would also look at how the pandemic had affected individuals from the perspective of jobs and employment.

Councillor Loffhagen welcomed Justin Brown, Assistant Director for Growth at Lincolnshire County Council, who had been invited to provide information on the local economy.

Justin Brown, Assistant Director for Growth at Lincolnshire County Council and Chairman of the Lincolnshire Resilience Forum’s Business and Economic Working Group provided a brief overview of the role of the Group. It was noted that the Group had been established in March 2020 and comprised membership from all local authorities in Lincolnshire, the University of Lincoln, the Federation of Colleges, the Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Department for Work and Pensions and a range of other organisations.

Mr Brown provided an overview in relation to what had happened in response to and during the Covid-19 pandemic, the current situation and the longer term economic recovery plan. The following points were noted:

·         funding had been made available by the Government as part of the first lockdown in the form of grants to small businesses. It was apparent that the team at the City of Lincoln Council ensured that grants were paid quickly and succinctly to those eligible businesses in the city and represented a very good piece of work. There was also good alignment between boundaries and effective partnership working with other local authorities in paying grants to businesses;

·         260 businesses had sought specific business advice, with a key component materialising being the wellbeing of business leaders. A wellbeing service had therefore been established for Greater Lincolnshire to provide advice and support in this respect;

·         in terms of the workforce, the furlough scheme had made a significant difference to job security. However, should that scheme end in April 2021 there was a concern in respect of mass-redundancies and whether the public sector was prepared and organised as much as it should be to cope with and react to this significant challenge;

·         weekly meetings with Government officials took place which had proved to be extremely important as that intelligence could be communicated to Government in order that it was able to adapt to the way in which things were occurring locally;

·         current data reflected that unemployment was rising in the Lincoln area and the end of the furlough scheme, currently scheduled for the end of April 2021, was increasingly worrying in terms of the impact it would have on these statistics. Fewer vacancies were available with employers seeking experience, which created a challenge especially for young people;

·         there had been a reduction in business investment as businesses had used their cash reserves to keep their businesses alive. They had struggled and suffered throughout each lockdown, but when this third lockdown was lifted a concern was that businesses would not have enough money to buy necessary stock to meet consumer demand;

·         rapid digitisation had occurred in response to the Covid-19 pandemic with lots of IT requirements having changed as a result. Lots of businesses were small and were not supported by professional IT teams in the same way that larger businesses and the public sector were, for example, which added further pressures and challenges to them;

·         certain locations in the county were struggling, particularly those where tourism and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 29.

The Chair invited members of the Community Leadership Scrutiny Committee to consider its work programme.

It was suggested, in the context of the current Scrutiny Review on the impact on individuals during the Covid-19 pandemic, that the City of Lincoln Council’s staff could potentially be used as a case study to understand how people were coping and had adapted to working from home. This could lead to a further piece of work as to how remote working had impacted people across the city during the pandemic.

The work programme was noted.