The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent
national lockdowns have had a significant
impact on businesses of all sizes,
particularly small businesses. Therefore, it
is essential that small businesses are
adequately supported to enable their
sustainable recovery from the pandemic.
The Mayor of London has assembled the
London Recovery Board (LRB) to oversee
and push forward initiatives to support the
long-term recovery of unemployment rates,
small business closures and lost economic
growth caused by the pandemic.
This report has identified two important
factors which are crucial to businesses’
ability to grow and survive and have
subsequently been impacted by the
pandemic: (1) growing and maintaining
social networks and (2) dealing with
uncertainty. The impact of the pandemic on
these factors has ultimately limited the
ability of small businesses to develop their
knowledge of business administration and
obtain investor financing. Anchor
institutions are private or public
organisations which have the potential to
make genuine social and economic impacts
to their localities due to their size and
spending power; they have been identified
as important actors in the city (GLA, 2021).
By using their spending power through
procurement, anchor institutions have an
important role in helping small businesses
recover from the pandemic. Public and
private anchor institutions can provide this
support by establishing local procurement
policies.
To help anchor institutions strategically
target resources, this report analysed the
impact of COVID-19 on small businesses by
industry. In addition, a tool has been
developed for anchor institutions to use to
help small businesses. The function of the
tool is to help anchor institutions make
informed decisions about setting and
assessing the effectiveness of their local
procurement policies. The tool does this by
plotting the locations of small businesses
and anchor institutions. This allows anchor
institutions to identify where and what
small businesses are in their locality.
Coupled with a list of small businesses who
were offered tenders, the tool also allows
institutions to see how many small
businesses they have offered
service/product tenders to out of the total
number of small businesses in the same
industry, and therefore, the effectiveness
of their local procurement policies.
Lists
Lists
Loading previews...
