Belfast Chamber Welcomes Creation of High Streets Task Force

Belfast Chamber has warmly welcomed the announcement by the Northern Ireland Executive that it is to create a new High Streets Task Force to help address the issues affecting city and town centres as a result of the impact of COVID-19.

Commenting, Belfast Chamber Chief Executive Simon Hamilton said, “This is a very positive and extremely welcome decision by the Executive and is a recognition by Ministers that many of our city and town centres are, like Belfast, facing into a major crisis as a result of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy. 

Belfast Chamber has been pressing for the creation of a task force to try to coordinate the response to COVID-19 across central and local government and develop both short and long term measures to arrest the decline of our high streets. We discussed the matter in depth with the First Minister and deputy First Minister this morning and are pleased that they have listened to our pleas.

We all know that there are challenges affecting our high streets which a task force will struggle to deal with but Belfast Chamber is in no doubt that there are steps that we can take to breathe new life back into our city and town centres and that we are far more likely to succeed if we work together through a task force which can develop a proper strategy and joined up approach to saving our high streets”.