Our town and village centres have started to come back to life with non-essential shops re-opening since Monday. Some of our Members in retail have shared their excitement at meeting customers face to-face again, catching up with their news, and with High Streets not being crowded but alive and with happy people again! Stores vary, but some are running an appointment system to ensure no more customers are admitted than is safe - so it’s worth checking this before you leave home. Things are likely to look and feel different with Social Distancing arrangements in place indoors and outdoors, and with many of those who bus into Leatherhead at lunchtime still working from home, but this is a good first step. It is to be hoped that there will soon be an opportunity for our hairdressing, hospitality and leisure businesses to reopen safely too, and for churches to be used for public worship also. Markets in Dorking and Leatherhead are open for business on their usual days weekly.
Here is a link to the
MVDC website
where they have listed everything you could want or need for restarting in one place. The different headings lead to the relevant sections of the advice contained on the Gov.uk website. This link is also on the
Home Page
of our website. For those looking for signage, screens, etc., Chamber Member
Kall Kwik Leatherhead
has developed a wide range in a number of colourways. Our videos of the Risk Assessment and Working Safely During Covid-19 and HR Considerations sessions featured in previous newsletters are still available on our
YouTube
channel
and are being added to weekly.
The Council has engaged The Retail Group, retail and consumer management consultants, to run webinars on 25 June and 2 July, and to provide free 1:1 support sessions for retailers on a first come first served basis. Find out more
here
.
Discretionary Grant Fund: details of eligibility for this have been released by MVDC and for
any
business that was ineligible for either of the £10,000 or £25,000 grants, it is well worth looking at
here
.
The joint event on Tuesday 16
th
June with
J
P Leadership Coaching
entitled ‘From Surviving to Thriving- Managing Ourselves So We Can Manage Our Businesses’ was led by Julia Philpot, who gave an excellent and thought-provoking presentation. This was recorded, though we did not record the Q&A session in view of the potential sensitivities, and a copy of the video can be found on our
YouTube
channel.
We held our monthly Virtual Breakfast on Wednesday, with 52 members and guests registered. Unfortunately we had pasted the wrong Zoom link into Eventbrite, but a hurried email brought in most of those registered to the live event. This was also our 4
th
session of the ‘Restart Your Business’ series: ‘Re-imagining Your Business Model’. Our thanks for their brief presentations or comments to our Panel members: Richard Butcher,
Coast to Capital
; Richard Green, Senior Regeneration Officer,
Mole Valley District Council
; Clare Batchelor,
Mouse Literate
and Alex Ramsden,
Web Motivation
, The video is available on our
YouTube
channel.
On Wednesday 24
th
June we have another ‘Virtual Coffee’ -
Restart Your Business Session 5
: ‘Kick-start your Website and Digital Marketing – especially in these alternative times’. Member Alex Ramsden of
Web Motivation
will make a presentation on the this topic, which is perhaps more relevant today than ever before, followed by a Q&A session, all of which will follow-on nicely from our Reimagining Your Business Model session.
Another Virtual Coffee session follows on Wednesday 1st July, led by Sophie Carr of
Bays Consulting
, around using data to assist your business, and details of this will be posted on our website and Eventbrite very shortly. That evening, at 6.45 for 7.00pm, Sophie and I will run the next
The Not a Pub Quiz
, full of fun with questions set by Sophie, who won our first Quiz!
A couple of reminders too - the list of Members who are
open for business
displayed on our website is still much shorter than the reality - so please email
Kerry-Anne Kitson
with details for this. We have re-launched our page
promoting offers
by our Members, so if you have an offer out there or wish to promote something special, please do send details to
Kerry-Anne
. We are also now publicising job opportunities for our Members on our news page, including current offers from
The Grange Centre
, so please let us have any other sits vacant too!
Finally, please do promote the benefits of
joining the Chamber
to your business colleagues and customers. If you have a window which needs one of our posters and a membership sticker do let us know, and we also have flyers for anyone in a position to deliver some.
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