NEWS SPECIAL
COVID-19 UPDATE FOR ALL THE LATEST CORONAVIRUS NEWS, HEAD TO WWW.SLRMAG.CO.UK/CATEGORY/NEWS/
Loans totalling £5.9bn has
FACE VISOR ADVICE UPDATED IN SCOTLAND
been lent to wholesale and
SCOTTISH FIRST MINISTER NICOLA STURGEON LAST WEEK
retail businesses under the
ANNOUNCED THAT FACE VISORS WORN ON THEIR OWN DO NOT
Bounce Bank Loans Scheme,
PROVIDE “SUFFICIENT PROTECTION” SO IF VISORS ARE WORN,
according to new data from
THEY MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY ANOTHER TYPE OF COVERING.
LENDING HITS £8BN
the British Business Bank. A further £2.1bn in loans has been made to wholesale and retail businesses under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan scheme.
MILLION MEALS Salad and vegetable producer G’s has diverted more than 450 tonnes of surplus veg to food charity FareShare, enough to create more than one million meals for
Nicola Sturgeon updated the Scottish Government’s advice on face visors on Friday, stating that “based on the latest scientific evidence” the government is “not convinced that a face visor on its own provides sufficient protection – to the wearer or to others“. Consequently, the official advice from Saturday 8 August was that, if a visor is worn, it must be accompanied by another type of face covering. The First Minister made the announcement after confirming that an additional 43 positive cases were
confirmed in Scotland last Thursday, representing 0.9% of the people who were newly tested and taking the total number of cases in Scotland to 18,890. She also confirmed that the number of positive cases confirmed as part of the new cluster of Covid-19 cases in Aberdeen had risen by 22 to 101. Among those were two players from Aberdeen Football Club. Sturgeon said that the government now intended to make it mandatory from this Friday for a range of settings to collect customer details.
vulnerable people. Since partnering with FareShare four years ago, five G’s sites are
CALLS FOR CONTACTLESS INCREASE
now regularly diverting surplus fresh food to communities who need it most.
NI COVERS UP The Northern Ireland Executive joined the rest of the UK in making face coverings mandatory in-store from Monday. The announcement was made last week and was supported by a public information campaign entitled ‘Wear One For Everyone’.
Around one in three shoppers in UK would be keen to see a further increase in the £45 contactless spending limit, with 40% of that group wanting the limit to be raised to £100. The survey, carried out by YouGov among more than 2,000 people, found that 39% of respondents wanted retailers to remove minimum spend limits. Home delivery and click and collect was also covered by the survey, with 42% of respondents calling for a greater range of delivery options with
8 I SLRMAG.CO.UK / ISSUE 17 / WEDNESDAY 12 AUGUST 2020
more time slots and 31% seeking more click & collect options. Some 30% would like more shop staff available to help process transactions. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a massive accelerator and has led to behavioural change among consumers that normally would take years,” says Andrew Quartermaine,” Vice President, Merchant Solutions at ACI Worldwide, who commissioned the survey. “As shopping habits have changed, so have the attitudes toward alternative payments.”
