WHILE the beginning of the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccinations has given us all hope of a return to some degree of normality, it remains clear that public health restrictions will still be necessary for a long time to come.

While these limits are in place, government support will be essential to giving businesses and other organisations in need the best chance of surviving this economic turmoil.

Given this ongoing need, and as we move back into Level 3 restrictions, I know many sectors have been frustrated with how slowly the Scottish Government has provided support.

Last week, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Kate Forbes, finally announced new support schemes for taxi drivers, tourism firms and the wedding sector. The Scottish Government also announced a package of support for spectator sports. This is, of course, welcome and will hopefully make a difference in these areas.

However, there are still various gaps in funding.

One of these is the hotel sector, where almost 300 hotels applied for support from the Hotel Support Programme. Despite this, the Cabinet Secretary for Tourism, Fergus Ewing, said it was only intended to support “in the region of 60” hotels. This failure to comprehend the scale of the crisis facing hotels is putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Another area that has been badly failed so far is the council-run leisure services sector. Local government leaders have highlighted losses of £227m in the sector due to Covid during the first six months of 2020. But the Scottish Government has only made £90million available to cover the funding shortfall. If additional funding is not allocated for vital council-run leisure services, such as swimming pools, sports centres and theatres, they are set to be at risk.

For anyone running a business or other enterprise, every day is vital and one of the lessons from the first nine months of this pandemic is that government must move faster to get support to those who need it.