Publication - Impact assessment

Coronavirus (COVID-19) business support: equality impact assessments

Published: 11 March 2022
From: Director-General Economy
Topic: Business, industry and innovation, Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Scotland, Economy
ISBN: 9781804351864

Detailed equality impact assessments (EQIAs) for the COVID-19 business support funding issued between March 2020 and April 2021.

Supporting documents

Bed & Breakfast Hardship Fund

Name of Grant:

Bed & Breakfast Hardship Fund

Policy Lead

Patrick Berry

Legal power used:

Overarching legal powers to take emergency action due to COVID

Grant Overview:

A fixed rate (£3k) grant award scheme for micro and small tourism and hospitality businesses, namely domestic Bed & Breakfast establishments, administered and disbursed by Local Authorities.

Executive Summary:

The Scottish Government understands the impact COVID-19 has had on businesses, which is why £4.3 billion has been committed to business support. This emergency funding has supported otherwise viable businesses, protecting the business base, jobs and livelihoods helping prepare for a stronger economic recovery.

This fund was developed quickly with the purpose to provide hardship relief to B&B/small serviced accommodation providers who had not been able to access support through other schemes, due to ineligibility.

This addressed a small sector adversely impacted by the pandemic, to provide emergency funding to help secure jobs, safeguard businesses and to alleviate hardship.

In developing these funds we engaged with The Scottish Bed & Breakfast Association, Visit Scotland, COSLA and reps from Scotland’s Local Authorities to understand the challenges facing the sector and develop a quickly deliverable support package.

We are also mindful that the equality duty is not just about negating or mitigating negative impacts, we also have a positive duty to promote equality. We have sought to do this by the support and guidance available. For example we have partnered with Scotland’s Local Authorities to ensure we have a local understanding of the businesses directly affected.

Key Findings - impact assessment of benefits and/or disadvantages.

The measures outline support for a small group of people and businesses protecting their income and helping to advance equality of opportunity by ensuring their survival through the pandemic. We sought to mitigate any negatives identified by ensuring all relevant networks signpost the fund to make sure it has the maximum impact.

Age: Older People and Children and Young People

It can be seen that a large proportion of the workforce in the accommodation and food services sector are young people: 36.8% of the accommodation and food services sector workforce is aged 16-24 compared to 12.3% of the workforce as a whole^[64].

Consultation with tourism and hospitality stakeholders demonstrated the importance of bespoke support for the sector during the pandemic due to its unique characteristics in order to mitigate the economic impact of this unprecedented crisis. Our main concern was to design funding schemes that would be inclusive for every business as long as they meet the funding scheme’s eligibility criteria.

The Bed and Breakfast Hardship Fund helped enable an equality of opportunity for young people by helping ensure the viability of Bed and Breakfasts across the country, therefore helping to preserve jobs that we can see are taken by young people.

The Scottish Government has made a commitment establishing a package of support to help young people, including £60 million for the Young Person's Guarantee and £15 million to establish the Apprenticeship Employer Grant. The ambition of the Young Person’s Guarantee is that, within two years, every person aged between 16 and 24 will have the opportunity to study; take up an apprenticeship, job or work experience; or participate in formal volunteering.

Sex: Men and Women

Women are more likely than men to work in the accommodation industry. We know that women constitute 54.8% of the workforce in Accommodation and Food Services^[65]. In addition, the minority ethnic employment gap is much higher for women (22.0 percentage points vs 9.5 for men, in 2019). The vast majority of part-time workers are women: in 2019, women aged 16+ accounted for three-quarters of part-time employment in Scotland^[66].

Consultation with stakeholders revealed the importance of tailored support for the Bed and Breakfast sector during the pandemic in order to mitigate the economic impact of this unparalleled crisis.

Our main concern was to design a funding schemes that would be inclusive for each Bed and Breakfast business, provided they were able to evidence meeting the criteria.

The Bed and Breakfast Hardship Fund contributed to advance equality of opportunity for women. Given a higher proportion of the workforce within this sector are likely to be women the Fund impacted directly by safeguarding jobs with hardship funding made accessible to aid future business viability.

Closing the gender gap will require a cross-government approach and we have made a commitment of £50m for the Women’s Business Centre over the course of this Parliament.

Race

We do not have statistics breaking down Bed and Breakfast ownership but we know that the sector with the highest proportion of non-UK nationals in the workforce is distribution, hotels and restaurants – 12.5 per cent of its workforce are non-UK nationals^[67].

Previous economic recessions have also disproportionately impacted minority ethnic employment, and this could be something that is repeated as a higher share of the visible minority ethnic population in employment work in the hospitality industry (31.7% vs 18.6% of the white population)^[68].

At the time of the last Census in in 2011 it could also be seen that Gypsy/Travellers are also most likely to be employed in the hospitality sector - 31% of all those who were employed, compared to 21% for the employed population as a whole^[69] Asian men and women (20%) were particularly likely to be working in wholesale and retail and accommodation and food services in 2011 compared to 6% for the employed population as a whole^[70].

Consultation with stakeholders revealed the importance of tailored support for the Bed and Breakfast sector during the pandemic in order to mitigate the economic impact of this unparalleled crisis. Our main concern was to design a funding schemes that would be inclusive for each Bed and Breakfast business, provided they were able to evidence meeting the criteria.

As this fund contributed to maintaining the financial viability of Bed and Breakfasts it is thought that this will also act to preserve jobs for a wide range groups. A large proportion of the workforce in the visitor accommodation sector are non-UK nationals, Asian people, Gypsy/Travellers as well as visible minority ethnic population, it is believed this fund will have acted to preserve jobs in these groups.

Closing the ethnicity gap will require a cross-government approach and we have made a commitment as such. Indeed, ethnicity pay gap reporting is an important step to identifying and addressing disparities faced by minority ethnic workers. That is why we are committed to publishing an ethnicity pay gap strategy to support our objective to improve labour market outcomes for minority ethnic people in Scotland. The strategy, due to be published in spring next year, will support employers to evidence how different minority ethnic groups are represented in an organisation, across different pay bands. This will also help employers to understand if there are unfair disparities and help drive strategies for the recruitment, retention and progression of minority ethnic groups.

Disability

The Scottish Government recognises that disabled people have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and lockdown, and we are engaging extensively with Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) to understand and tackle the complex reasons for this.

We do not possess data on disabled people for the Bed and Breakfast sector. That said,

In 2019, the employment rate for those classed as disabled under the Equality Act 2010 was 49.0 per cent which was significantly lower than the employment rate for non-disabled people (81.6 per cent). In 2019, the disability employment gap was 32.6 percentage points.
The disability employment gap was lower for women (27.5 percentage points) than men (38.2 percentage points) for ages 16 to 64 and across all other age bands. The disability employment gap was lower for young people and increased with age, with the gap being highest for those aged 50 to 64 years, for both women and men^[71].

We can suppose that we find the same proportion in the Bed and Breakfast sector. The Scottish Government worked in collaboration with its delivery partners, Scotland’s Local Authorities to put in place accessibility measures to ease applications for disabled people.

For instance:

The guidance was announced earlier than the fund going live, allowing any issues to be reported early.
Dedicated case handlers within Local Authorities were appointed as points of contact to ensure continuity.
Documents were available in written format to try and ensure that it was accessible to those with difficulty in using digital technology.

This contributed to reducing discrimination and advancing equality of opportunity for Bed and Breakfast owners with a disability.

Closing the disability gap will require a cross-government approach and the Scottish Ministers established the Social Renewal Advisory Board in June 2020 to focus on tackling poverty and advancing equality as we began to emerge from the pandemic. The Social Renewal Advisory Board considered issues experienced by disabled people over this period, taking views from a wide range of individuals, groups and organisations. The report “If not now, when?” was published in January 2021. The concluding section of the report identifies a final Call to Action on how the actions in this report can be taken forward.