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

Visitor Attractions Fund

Name of Grant:

COVID-19 Business Support Fund - Visitor Attractions (excludes those publicly owned tourist attractions)

Policy Lead

Judith Young/Caroline Cantin

Legal power used:

Overarching legal powers to take emergency action due to COVID

Grant Overview:

The tourism sector is a key part of Scotland’s economy. In 2018 combined spending of £10.6 billion by day and overnight visitors generated around £12 billion of economic activity in the wider Scottish supply chain and supports around £7 billion to Scottish GDP (4% of total). Pre-pandemic, Tourism provided around 218,000 jobs and around 14,000 businesses covering all parts of Scotland^[350].

Tourism activity in 2019 continued to be a major driver of the national economy, recording record high levels of overnight visitors which in turn supported record high levels of tourism related employment and tourism business operators. Scottish tourism in 2019 was worth an estimated £11.6 billion to the Scottish economy which represented a notable annual increase of 9%^[351]. The latest Scottish Government figures for the sustainable tourism sector shows tourism related employment in 2019 increased from 218,000 people to 229,000 (5% increase). The tourism business base increased to 15,215 businesses in 2020, the highest on record^[352]. Overnight trips and bed-nights increased markedly in 2019 (by 11% and 12% respectively). Spending (in 2019 prices) also increased by 12%^[353].

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on global health and the global economy. This has impacted employment and income levels in households throughout the world. Tourism is widely accepted as the global industry most affected by the crisis.

The tourism sector has experienced substantial and continued reductions in trade in the period since March 2020, compared with previous years. Industry data from STR and VisitScotland indicate occupancy rates across Scotland in 2020 as being substantially below those seen in 2019^[354]. This has had an impact on the whole tourism sector.

The challenging situation in the tourism sector was closely related to the considerable reduction of international visitors. For instance, ONS data for Scotland for Q1 2020 showed that there was a 17% decrease in overseas tourism visits to Scotland compared to Q1 2019^[355]; ONS data for Q2 2020 indicated that international visits to the UK were 96% lower than Q2 2019^[356]. Moreover, VisitBritain’s published forecasts suggest international inbound tourism to the UK in 2020 declined by 76% in terms of visits to 9.7 million and by 80% in terms of spending to £5.7 billion^[357].

In December 2020, the requirement to cease trading was based on the introduction of the stay at home requirements, including the requirement not to be away from your primary residence overnight, and to remain within a limited distance of that primary residence, other than for essential/exempted purposes. Tourism offers people the opportunity to move around the country, and creates opportunities for social interaction, which was wholly incompatible with the restrictions put in place to suppress the spread of the virus.

The gradual reopening of the tourism sector including visitor accommodation through summer 2020, starting with self-contained accommodation and then other types, did allow some economic activity within the broader sector. However the limits on household gathering that remained in force and other restrictions, throughout this period, meant that the tourism business model, which relies on socialization was especially hard hit, as this was fundamentally incompatible with these restrictions.

Following consultation with the tourism and hospitality stakeholders, SG decided to set up the COVID-19 Support Scheme for visitor attractions to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on visitor attractions (exclude those publicly owned tourist attractions), which were heavily impacted by the pandemic.

The £10 million fund was delivered by Visit Scotland, developed with input from the sector.

The COVID-19 lockdown, travel guidance and current social distancing measures placed visitor attractions under considerable financial strain. The purpose of this fund was to help keep visitor attractions in business while the restrictions remained in place. Visitor attractions play an important role in both the tourism industry and in local communities in Scotland. This fund was open to visitor attractions who met the definition of a ‘visitor attraction’ as set out within the guidance notes, and who had an annual turnover in excess of £10,000.

As part of the National Performance Framework, this fund contributed to this national outcome: economy.

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 includes the support package of £129 million to support a range of tourism and hospitality businesses from January 2021. This emergency funding has supported otherwise strong and viable businesses as well as jobs.

In order to address the needs of the tourism and hospitality sector adversely impacted by the pandemic, a range of tourism business support funds were introduced from January 2021 to provide emergency funding to help secure jobs, safeguard businesses and to alleviate hardship.

Within this context of emergency, there was limited opportunity to gather evidence on the possible impacts of these measures before their implementation. Nevertheless, this fund was set up following extensive consultation with the relevant tourism and hospitality stakeholders. More specifically, it is important to stress that there was extensive proactive engagement with this sector throughout the pandemic (and this continues) to try and address their concerns and issues, via the Scottish Tourism Alliance, who have coordinated input on behalf of the accommodation provider sector and key stakeholders. This engagement has been in place since the start of the pandemic and gives the Scottish Government a close understanding of the issues facing the sector.

The tourism and hospitality stakeholders represent businesses who have a large proportion of employees with one or more of the protected characteristics. Indeed, evidence tells us that the workforce in the tourism sector is comprised of people who are predominately, but not exclusively, from of people who have one or more of the protected characteristics below:

women^[358], young people (16-24 years old)^[359], non-UK nationals^[360] and people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage^[361].

Therefore in developing this EQIA the Scottish Government is mindful of the three needs of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) - eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not, and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. Where any negative impacts have been identified, we have sought to mitigate/eliminate these. We are also mindful that the equality duty is not just about negating or mitigating negative impacts, as we also have a positive duty to promote equality.

For this reason, the Scottish Government worked in collaboration with its delivery partner Visit Scotland to establish a rigorous assessment process that was overseen by a steering committee in order to assure the fairness of the process. More specifically:

All applications were assessed by the two same people and all assessments were reviewed by a third person.
If the application was not complete, Visit Scotland offered the possibility to candidates to submit additional information before taking a decision.
If the applicant was not satisfied with the decision, it was possible to appeal the decision. Non Visit Scotland representatives were part of the appeal panel.

Businesses were able to apply for more than one tourism funding schemes. However, it was only possible to be successful in one of the funds administered by Visit Scotland in 2021, in order to support the maximum number of businesses and, by extension, the maximum number of employees/owners with one or more of the protected characteristics.

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

First, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the tourism and hospitality team does not possess any data about the socio-economic profiles of visitor attractions’ owners.

Age: Older People and Children and Young People

We know that a large proportion of the workforce in the tourism sector are young people: 36.2% of tourism sector workforce is aged 16-24 compared to 12.3% of the workforce as a whole^[362].

Consultation with tourism and hospitality stakeholders demonstrated the importance of bespoke support for the tourism sector during the pandemic due to the unique characteristics of the sector 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 COVID-19 Business Support Fund - Visitor Attractions contributed to advance equality of opportunity for young people. Indeed, this fund contributed to maintain visitor attractions’ financial viability. Since a large proportion of the workforce in the tourism sector are young people, this fund preserved jobs and contributed to advance equality of opportunity for this group of people.

Closing the age gap will require a cross-government approach and we have made a commitment as such in response to the pandemic. We established 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 Scottish Budget includes an initial additional investment of £125 million for the Young Person’s Guarantee, the National Transition Training Fund and broader skills and employability support. 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

We know that women are more likely than men to work in the tourism sector industry. Women constitute 52.2% of the workforce in tourism^[363]. 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^[364].

The COVID-19 Business Support Fund - Visitor Attractions contributed to advance equality of opportunity for women. Indeed, this fund contributed to maintain visitor attractions’ financial viability. Since a large proportion of the workforce in the tourism sector are women, this fund preserved jobs for this group of people.

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

The industry sector with the highest proportion of non-UK nationals in the workforce is distribution, hotels and restaurants – 16 per cent of its workforce are non-UK nationals (compared to 8.3% of the workforce as a whole)^[365].

Moreover, previous economic recessions have disproportionately impacted minority ethnic employment, and this may be repeated, especially given that a higher share of the visible minority ethnic population in employment work in the tourism industry (31.7% vs 18.6% of the white population)^[366].

Consultation with tourism and hospitality stakeholders demonstrated the importance of bespoke support for the tourism sector during the pandemic due to the unique characteristics of the sector (requiring sharing of rooms and other facilities) 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 COVID-19 Business Support Fund - Visitor Attractions contributed to advance equality of opportunity for non-UK nationals as well as visible minority ethnic population at large. Indeed, this fund contributed to maintain visitor attractions’ financial viability. Since a large proportion of the workforce in the tourism sector are non-UK nationals as well as visible minority ethnic population, this fund preserved jobs for these groups of people.

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 tourism and hospitality sector specifically. 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^[367].

We can suppose that we find the same proportion in the tourism sector. The Scottish Government worked in collaboration with its delivery partner Visit Scotland to put in place accessibility measures to ease applications for disabled people.

For instance:

There were multiple channels of communication and submission for the applicant if they had accessibility issues.
As the guidance was announced a week earlier than going live with the application form, this allowed any issues to be reported early.
Dedicated emails were set up and Visit Scotland reception redirected any calls as appropriate.
Visit Scotland provided documents in written format to try and ensure that it was accessible to an option of postal application was provided for applicants who may have had difficulty in using digital technology.

This contributed to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity for visitor attractions’ owners/employees with a disability and foster good relations with this group of people.

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.