Newry BID is engaging with members directly to support them with the unprecedented challenges and uncertainties arising from Covid-19. The constant stream of news makes it more difficult to operate all our businesses.

We are asking Government both for clear advice and support and are engaging directly with Council seeking help for our members on this public health crisis.

We want to ensure that Newry remains a safe place to visit, shop and work.

In order to ensure Newry gets through this as well as possible we are asking members to:

1. Monitor updates regularly
2. Follow advice on hygiene and insist on hand washing in particular
3. Regularly clean your premises with particular attention on areas of public / staff interaction
4. Support our efforts to encourage people to shop local

Our ongoing lobbying of Government for “Rates Parity” is now even more important and the adoption of the measures supporting English business in the last budget. The High Street Rates Relief for businesses with an NAV under £51,000 would mean a years rates holiday for 87% of our members.

We are also asking government to put in place immediate, short term, support for high street businesses to deal with liquidity problems, to help them through a challenging time, if they have not done so already. Unfortunately, the existing Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme has not been successfully adopted locally to date

We are working with partners to develop high level peer-to-peer networking to share experiences and best practice internationally. We will also ensure high quality information is getting to the industry in a timely manner.

We ask members to share their experiences as we gather data on the impact of COVID-19 on Newry to aid our evidenced based lobbying to develop a programme of long-term regeneration once the virus has been overcome.

The advice from Government is evolving rapidly and we will update as often as we can. In the meantime, do keep an eye on the Gov.uk website and our website www.newry.com