Shropshire Council plan to help businesses recover from coronavirus crisis being prepared

The council is in talks with town chambers of commerce, business improvement districts (BIDs), the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership and central government on a strategy to get businesses back on their feet after the pandemic.

But council leader Peter Nutting has warned difficult decisions will need to be made.

“It will be important to get the economy of Shropshire working to its full potential as quickly as possible,” said Councillor Nutting.

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“The council will continue to push forward with its capital programme and work to improve the infrastructure of Shropshire and also support all education, training and employment opportunities.

“It will be more important than ever that we provide a lead to our local communities and don’t shy away from making the difficult decisions needed to allow Shropshire to flourish.”

Councillor Nutting made the comments at the authority’s first remote Cabinet meeting, at which questions were raised over what the authority’s leadership would do to help businesses affected by the lockdown.

Councillor Steve Charmley, portfolio holder for economic growth and regeneration, said the immediate priority was to distribute government-funded grants, with thousands of applications being processed and millions of pounds already handed out.

He said talks were ongoing with partners “to explore what additional support may be available”, and that a particular focus was on Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Bridgnorth which were already facing challenging times as a result of the flooding in February.

Councillor Charmley added: “While we have started to use the data, impacts and trends to pull together ideas for the recovery phase after the lockdown starts to be lifted, and we will share this over the coming weeks, we must continue to focus on pushing out the financial support to help deal with the immediate impacts for those eligible businesses.”