One of the
initiatives being put to City of Melbourne on Tuesday 29th August
concerns business continuity for traders during renewal and how traders might
be assisted as they tackle a period of construction and change. Some traders
are asking if the proposal being put to Council needs clarification before it
becomes useful.
The proposal
refers to a Trader Support Fund and a complementary Trader Assistance Program.
That combination will include financial compensation and other assistance
including what has been referred to as advice from various sources including “Business
Partners”.
The Trader
Support Fund Advisory Committee is the governing body through which
individual trader requests for financial assistance from the Fund would be made
and assessed. At Thursdays Trader Meeting, Joanne Wandel was keen to point out
that this involves public money and there would be strict accountability. The
Council has further stated that there is no legal obligation for them to
provide compensation.
A minimum of
$8 million has been allocated to the Fund. According to the proposal put to
Council “The purpose of the Fund is to provide financial assistance to Traders
where the effects of the QVMPR Program works cannot be adequately mitigated and
have resulted in a demonstrable negative impact on the Trader's profit during
the period of the works.”
There are
many questions surrounding the application of the fund. The fund is capped so
does that mean that some deserving traders might miss out? Are we trying to
protect the smaller fragile traders or those with larger business operations at
QVM? How will compensation be
calculated? Will it be applied to rent? For some traders rent has a significant
impact on profit, for others it is less significant.
Any
assistance package is a very welcome ingredient for traders, but maybe we need to know more about how this might work and how the unique fragility of small market businesses will be addressed.
COMMENTS:
27/08/2017 19:30:04 Trader Support Fund "Undoubtedly most traders welcome, appreciate and endorse any assistance on offer but given the short period available to review and comment on the initiatives they would welcome an opportunity to discuss many of the questions raised by the information currently available to them thus ensuring the best possible use of the funds generously made available by the Melbourne council." Ivano
Thanks Ivano. You know more about this subject than most traders. More information would be good. - Ed