Stockport’s ruling Lib Dem group have brought forward proposals to help businesses in the Borough during the current challenging times.

The Council has taken a lead role in supporting local businesses in recent years: for example, through the Boost campaign and the LABGI (Local Authority Business Growth Incentive) resources. Although there’s now less money available we believe it’s absolutely essential to support businesses as best we can.

So we propose:

• Support for a Citizen’s Advice Support Worker – £30,000 to deliver this service for another two years.  The service is currently funded to the end of this year and has been highly successful.
• £330,000 for “Participatory Budgeting” in the business community to support local businesses and the local economy.  This Participatory Budgeting will engage local residents and businesses in how the money should be spent in their area.  Where it’s been used in the past, we’ve found it to be very successful in achieving big things with small amounts of money.
• Match funding to support economic development projects – £170,000 which will allow businesses to bid for external funding  where match funding is a requirement (which is more and more the case).
• £120,000 for festive Christmas lights

The money for this comes from the Priority Improvement Funding – a million pounds the Lib Dems have allocated in this year’s Council budget for these sorts of important schemes.

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