Covid-19 | POLICY UPDATE #1

It’s ‘virtual’ business as usual from SETsquared Bath

As we find ourselves in unprecedented times how we can keep business going as usual during these times of social distancing and inevitably isolation is something we are all working towards - we wanted to let you know that our commitment to supporting our SETsquared Bath members and business community is still at the forefront of what we do.

 Firstly, we hope that you are all staying safe and well during these very unusual and challenging times.  There is undoubtedly a mixture of emotions as we all plan our contingency planning around mitigating coronavirus impact.

The Innovation Centre in Bath is operating with skeleton staff and we are not encouraging visitors - primarily it is staying open because the building is residential, but the majority of staff and our members are now working from home. 

From an operational point of view we are still continuing to support SME and start up companies through the ERDF Business Acceleration Hubs - the Sustainable Technologies, Advanced Engineering and Digital Innovation will still continue to operate.  We continue to accept new companies and provide Business Acceleration support, our Entrepreneur in Residence will carry out diagnostic meetings with new companies through conference calls and we will still be assigning consultancy support in the the same way.  Obviously face to face meetings are not to be encouraged but we wanted to reassure you that we will still be delivering consultancy support through our mentors and coaches - these hours will be delivered through conference calls and the assigned consultants will find the best way of working with businesses to provide the support they require via Skype, Facetime, Zoom.

We are also currently working on shifting to virtual delivery for a number of workshop programmes - we will communicate this as soon as we have full detail on these.

We will still be providing our ‘In Residence’ services for Innovation Centre members and also participants of the ERDF Business Acceleration Hubs - this free advice from our lawyers, accountants, tax advisors can be booked online, here or alternatively please email innovation-centre@bath.ac.uk and we can sort appointments this way - for the moment all these appointments will all be done virtually until further notice.

If you are a company already receiving support through one of our ERDF Business Acceleration Hubs please continue to liaise with your consultant as they will continue to provide support and work with you - particularly if you’re looking for additional / contingency support during these uncertain economic times we’re faced with.

We hope this gives you some reassurance and that we will continue to support our members and SMEs / start ups business community. Hopefully, we can ride this wave and things will look brighter as we head into Summer. Please continue to check in with us, as we further develop our virtual online business support through a variety of free growth workshops and entrepreneur programmes.  We are all having to adapt and innovate in a different way as the world shifts slightly.

Take care, stay safe, well and if you need to talk please get in touch.

The SETsquared Bath Team