To ask the Minister for the Economy for his assessment of (i) his Department’s final survey on the effectiveness of the Spend Local Scheme; and (ii) the overall success of the scheme.

The NISRA COVID-19 Opinion Survey helped inform the Department on how well the various aspects of the Scheme were performing whilst it was operating and the findings clearly demonstrate the positive experiences applicants had applying for their Spend Local card as well as the overall benefit to local businesses of spend on the cards throughout Northern Ireland.

The full set of survey results can be found at Northern Ireland High Street Scheme Survey October 2021 to March 2022 Report

The High Street Scheme was a huge success injecting more than £136.5 million into the local economy, providing a much needed economic boost to our retail, hospitality and service sectors to help them recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic. Of this spend, £84.9m was spent in businesses required by Covid Regulations to close during 2020, providing a much needed boost to these businesses.

The Department commissioned an independent research report by Retail Economics to assess the perceived value of the Scheme during its operation and found that it was comprehensively welcomed by retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in NI and was seen as an effective way to stimulate the economy, restore consumer confidence and safeguard jobs. The report concluded that 80% of retail and hospitality businesses agreed that the Scheme helped support small independent businesses with the majority reporting that the Scheme had a positive or very positive impact on sales against their expectations for the time of year; 80% of small retailers thought that the Scheme encouraged spending that was otherwise unlikely to have occurred and two-thirds (66%) of small businesses thought that it was a good use of public money.

The Scheme was also well received by our local business representatives, with the Ulster Bank stating that the Scheme had undoubtedly contributed to the pick-up in demand after retail sales in Northern Ireland rose in November for the first time in four months. In addition, figures published by the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC) in December 2021 showed a boost to the number of people going into shops or businesses in October being continued in November following the introduction of the High Street Scheme. The Report demonstrated that Northern Ireland’s footfall in November increased by 5.6 percentage points on the previous month. Northern Ireland’s shop visits were 10 percentage points higher than the UK average.

My Department has commissioned a Post-Project Evaluation (PPE) of the Scheme. The PPE has commenced and will assess the extent to which the Scheme was successfully implemented, achieved its original objectives and provided an economic stimulus for the local economy taking into account the challenges of delivering a scheme of this scale within a very tight timeframe.