Philip Grant

The bank has unveiled its new report, The Big Conversation: Helping Britain Recover, which harnesses insights gathered from business leaders, policy-makers, and community leaders around the UK and highlights strong calls from stakeholders for a bespoke regional approach to the economic recovery.

The report follows the group convening 22 discussions with over 900 local businesses, industry leaders, politicians and experts across the UK’s nations and regions.

In Scotland, the event Business and SMEs – Driving Sustainable Recovery in Scotland, discussed the benefits of increased collaboration at a regional level.

Given the central importance of SMEs to the recovery, other clear areas for policy focus emerged. These included building the skills of SMEs, help with sourcing and supporting apprentices and more integrated and accessible business guidance.

Lloyds Banking Group used its network to bring together participants at a time when listening, sharing experiences and a sense of community is even more important than ever before.

These roundtables were hosted virtually over three months and saw panels come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities they’ve faced this year and share ideas for building a sustainable recovery across the UK.

Nationally, the conversations explored the critical areas of support needed to help rebuild communities and inform public policy and also identified emerging consensus on what is required to support the UK’s recovery.

The insights will help shape future group strategy. Discussions focused on support for SMEs, digital skills, agriculture, housing, household finances, electric vehicles and sustainability.

In the process of sharing experiences, stories of outstanding resilience emerged: business models pivoting to exploit online retail opportunities, production lines integrating social distancing measures and employees retraining in digital skills to equip them, and their firms, for the future. A clear consensus that collaboration and innovation must be at the heart of the recovery came to the fore.

Philip Grant, chair of Lloyds Banking Group’s Scottish Executive Committee, said: “As a nation we need to think regionally and remember that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to Scotland’s recovery. Our recent Big Conversation event highlighted that support for sectors such as tourism and hospitality is vital. It is also important that it’s coupled with collaboration at a local level.

“We know the years ahead will have challenges, but we’re committed to using what we’ve learned during these difficult times and ensuring businesses, industry leaders, community members and political representatives are brought together to help firms build back from the pandemic.”

The politicians, businesses, campaigners and community leaders involved in the events made it clear that they want to see regionally focused recovery strategies, shaped by local voices for local economies, to ensure the right solutions are put in place.

António Horta-Osório, CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, added: “After nearly a year of huge upheaval for our personal and professional lives, we know that it’s more important than ever that we all take the time to listen. Given our depth of expertise and our presence across the UK’s nations and regions, we were able to bring together a vibrant network of businesses, industry experts and MPs so we could all listen and learn from each other’s experiences.

“A huge amount was discussed in the course of The Big Conversation, but a few themes became particularly clear. For me, the most striking of which was that while there were many shared experiences among businesses in certain sectors, the largest differences were in the experiences of businesses and communities in different geographies. This makes a tailored, regionally-led and regionally-informed approach to our national recovery essential.”