Just to bring everyone up to date:
1. We submitted our case for Emergency Funding to DCMS/Treasury last week and we are awaiting a response to that.
2. Andrew Bingham, the former MP we are employing, has written to Ministers at DCMS, Communities and BEIS setting out our position and asking for a meeting. He is due to follow up with them later this week or early next.
3. I have now joined the One Industry One Voice taskforce to represent EIF – it is becoming increasingly important that the activities of all the lobbying groups is co-ordinated if we are to get traction with Government.
4. While the increasing lock downs in regions are making it more and more difficult for events to take place, we need to prepare a campaign to try and win local authorities on side if we are to move forward again. While some have been supportive, a lot are extremely risk averse and blocking events. Unfortunately, central government seems to be powerless to get them to work with us. To this end, we need to prepare a campaign to present local authorities with the positives of supporting events going forward. In order to do this I could do with two things from you all:
a) Economic impact assessments for any events that have taken place in the last couple of years that we could quote to show the financial benefits to communities of supporting events – ideally, undertaken by independent bodies.
b) Examples of events that have successfully taken place which we could use as case studies, ideally with a brief description of how they managed social distancing, ingress, egress, transport etc. so that we can demonstrate to local authorities how events can be run safely.
The intention would be to produce a document that we can circulate to local authorities, hopefully via the LGA, but which can also be used by your members when talking to local authorities about events. It would be good to have a selection of case studies covering the key sectors of the industry.
5. I am in the process of drafting a document setting out the barrister’s opinion on the duties of local authorities. This has been delayed as we had to get the submission into the Treasury last week but I hope to have this done shortly and will make this available to everyone so that they can share it with their members.