Government Releases Updated Hospitality Strategy

The Government has just published its update on the delivery of their Hospitality Strategy.

The initial strategy was published in July 2021 and set out the Government’s target to help the industry “build back stronger and greener from the pandemic.” To read the report in full, click here.

NCASS has been advising on hospitality recovery throughout. It was developed as we emerged from Covid to help address both immediate and longer term issues facing the wider sector. It was announced in the original strategy that govt would work with industry to develop pilot schemes based on ‘hospitality led regeneration’ the first of these pilots is the Sefton project. The strategy also announced a council, which NCASS Managing Director Nick Summers was invited to join.

The council looked at different problem areas and working groups created to feed in ideas. NCASS sat in a group looking at independent high street regeneration and culture, with Stakeholder Director Mark Laurie present.

A summary of the points include:

• NCASS is delighted to contribute to a Government pilot scheme as we haven’t done this before
• The pilot scheme is specifically aimed at proving that independent hospitality businesses, with the right support can re-imagine town centres and make them appealing again
• That street food and mobile catering are a key part of this
• If successful it should create opportunities for NCASS members to trade as other towns, cities, areas adopt similar approaches
• Street trading will ideally be liberalised – creating further opportunities for mobile caterers
• Sefton is intended to develop a hub for indie hospitality that other indie businesses can cluster around and benefit from, creating opportunities for fixed site
• It will open up mobile hospitality, street food and food truck culture to a far wider audience
• It is hoped that better co-ordination of events, experiences and night time economy on a localised level will enable cultural quarters that support artists and entrepreneurs and innovation

What does this mean?

We use our platform to genuinely represent our members and continually strive to ensure the independent voices we work with are heard and have their chance to be heard.

We wanted to take this opportunity to praise our members for feeding in information, as it was the case studies and data provided throughout Covid and more recently that have helped us to explain to Government departments how issues such as the cost of energy are impacting small and micro businesses.

We are one of the only organisations representing independent food businesses (also independent brewers) at Council level and although we don’t necessarily get what we want, we are in the room – and therefore so are our customers.

The reality is that big businesses have a lot of sway. Through the pilot scheme and council work where we’ve been pushing to we have a greater chance of creating an ‘indie’ counter point to the prevalent corporate influence. NCASS strives to act as a ‘voice of independents’ and this is a great step towards us being recognised as that. The Strategy Update demonstrates that we continue to represent each member and put independent hospitality in the UK where it belongs and independent traders get the opportunities they deserve.

If you have any thoughts on any of the subjects outlined in this article, please do get in touch. We need to continue to make the case for independent businesses and in order to represent and relay what you as an individual business needs moving forward, we need to know your experiences, your case studies, your opinions etc.

To get in touch, please email [email protected].