Dear Member, I'd like bring you up to date on five key areas: (click on the Article Index or the links below to access each section)
1.Industry Pilot
2.Positive Physical Action
3.DCMS Industry Survey
4.Ongoing / changes to lobbying focus
5.Summary of Industry Campaigns
But first if you could watch this brief video (of me - below) it will help frame, I hope, the importance of this update and your response to it.
https://youtu.be/07iW-udhc64
1. Industry Pilot
We are pleased to confirm that the pilot process now has sign off from No10 as well as the Cabinet Office.
More detail can be found below.
‘Government is working with industry partners to develop a series of pilots testing different types of events of different sizes and at different venues both inside and outside of London. These pilots will provide a practical environment to check the risk reduction measures outlined in DCMS Visitor Economy & Industry (AEO) Guidance. Pilots will determine whether all appropriate mitigations are in place, and whether any parts of the guidance need to be strengthened or changed to support the sector to organise future business events. These pilots will support the planned reopening of the business events industry from 1 October, subject to public health advice
We have 3 pilot locations (times during the day) as follows:
- Wednesday 2nd September (central London - c.300 delegates) - This is specific to exhibitions and will be running at a London based venue;
- Thursday 3rd September (central London - c.100 delegates) - Running at a well-known hotel chain in Canary Wharf and will be a Conference focussed pilot;
- Wednesday 9th September (Bedfordshire - c. 200 delegates) - This will be running at a hotel in Bedfordshire and is a Banqueting style pilot event.
DCMS also requests that this is not circulated beyond your organisations or to appear on social media.
Just to confirm the pilots are being led by the numerous Government departments, PHE and the CMO with DCMS are co-ordinating the activities. We are in daily dialogue with officials and are helping in every way we can to ensure their success.
There will be a feedback period to follow the pilots taking place, in which we will be representing members to push for this to come through as swiftly as possible.
2. Positive Physical Action
A number of members and wider industry professionals have discussed with ESSA on numerous occasions our position with regard to
organising some form of physical action in response to our current industry plight.
ESSA reviews via its EIA Board representatives and the ESSA Board its position within the area of ESSA endorsing or organising its
own action.
In light of this week’s industry protest and member contact, the Board would like to hear from you
the members. What is your view of ESSA endorsing or organising some form of positive physical action?
Via the link below, you will be asked to answer a single question to help inform the ESSA Board better on its current position in this area. You may also provide further feedback to support your decision.
This link will remain live until Friday 4th September.
A key element within this feedback is that due to the timeline and sensitive nature of the pilots and current round of meetings with government, we would continue with our current strategy until at least 14th September.
What is our current position?
ESSA’s strategy, aligned with its sister associations the AEV and AEO has been to maintain a direct and highly professional dialogue with various government groups during the current plight. The focus of this dialogue has been via the DCMS, BEIS, TIER, BVEP (of which we’re members) and the Events Industry Board (specialist panel of senior individuals who are invited to speak direct with ministers).
We are the only group of trade associations who are invited and have gained this opportunity on behalf of the exhibition sector after several years working professionally with these groups on other project concerning our sector. No other person or body specifically represents you in these groups. These relationships are changeable (different Ministers appointed, changes in government personnel), sometimes fragile and yes often frustrating with the speed in which decisions are made taking unimaginable amounts of time. But I have to stress, this is currently our only opportunity for direct conversation with influential government representatives and due to this we have needed to protect this position.
Advice taken throughout this current process via lobbying consultants has been one of extreme caution by the associations when it comes to taking or endorsing physical action in order to further ones aims themselves. We hope you understand that this position has been important to take to get to where we are.
All the gains we have made in the past few weeks have been via these platforms and this dialogue. It is the associations who were asked to develop guidance to begin the process of enabling the government to get their heads around a possible re-start date and pilots integral to maintain this date. But so far we have not been successful in gaining specific financial support for our sector and we have no indication presently as to whether or not we are making progress on this point. The government ministers and representatives at our disposal simply will not engage in providing feedback in these areas currently.
The focus of any positive physical action would be aimed at furthering our position to gain this fiscal recognition and support.
3. DCMS Industry Survey
DCMS invites you - and the businesses that you represent - to take part in a second round of a survey being conducted to understand
the impact of the Coronavirus outbreak on organisations in the events and exhibitions sectors as well as the other sectors, digital,
culture, media, sport, gambling, telecoms, and tourism which come under its remit.
The survey has been commissioned by DCMS to better understand the needs of its stakeholders.
Your answer will remain anonymous and will be used to inform DCMS’ preparedness efforts.
The deadline for responses to the survey will be at 23:59 GMT on 8th September 2020.
4. Ongoing / changes to lobbying focus
The past 5 months has seen our focus change as we accomplished some of our goals (guidance & ‘go dates’).
Having received feedback from a number of members a couple of weeks back via the member survey, our focus via our
direct engagement with government is now in the following areas.
- Inclusion and extension of business rate reliefs until 2022
- Inclusion on any future job retention schemes
- Repurposing of D.I.T’s international exhibitor funding scheme to be extended to domestic events
- Inclusion on any government grants specific to the sector
- Government backed insurance schemes specific to our sector
We must continue to raise the noise and I cannot encourage you enough to make friends and fans of your MPs or simply be a nuisance. Having these MPs (many for the first time) begin to understand our sector and its plight several weeks ago was integral to helping push our cause. Many of whom were questioning directly and running around on our behalf in the corridors of power. These MPs are returning to work imminently and we must continue with this dialogue. We will have more/new templates available for you to use soon but I always encourage the personal approach. If you need help in this area we are always here with facts, figures and current templates to support. We can even help with sourcing the details of your MP.
5. Summary of industry campaigns
We hope you find this resource useful and if you are aware of other campaigns please let us know and we can add them. This information will be on a fresh ESSA web page soon and notified once ready
