What a year it has been and certainly not the one we were expecting. We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your patience with the Vital and Viable project. We are aware that we built a lot of momentum with bringing the Institute of Place management to look at our four inland market towns and then delivering the subsequent workshops. It was truly inspiring to meet so many people who are interested in their towns and people who want to make a difference to where they live.
As you will be aware, our team had to prioritise the delivery of the Government funded grants to businesses as part of the Covid-19 emergency response. This work continues on as we respond to the second lockdown, supporting the distribution of the various business grant schemes that Government have made available to business affected by the lockdown and now our Tier 3 status. We are pleased to say that we've currently issued over £2.6m of much needed funding to local businesses through the current schemes.
More details about the schemes can be found on our website.Our Vital and Viable project has still been a key focus, though disappointingly we haven't had the staff resource needed to take it as far as we had planned for 2020. But don't worry, we plan to come back in 2021 with a bang and
we are delighted to share with you the Action Plan for Spilsby. This plan has been developed purely from your feedback. We've listened to everything you told us in our workshops and collated these plans with a view to explore all the ideas you generated. We can't commit to delivering every aspect mentioned, but we are keen to see how we can work with you and seek funding for as many of the goals and aspirations you've suggested. Therefore, if there is a particular area you would like to support us with, please do get in touch! Our first newsletter in 2021 will set out some of the projects we plan to initially focus on.
We wish you all a very merry Christmas. We plan to host a town meeting to discuss Vital and Viable once we are allowed to and look forward to seeing you all in 2021!