£8.9m ‘Spend Local’ boost

Residents of Causeway Coast and Glens Council area spent almost £9m using their High Street vouchers.
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Figures released by the Department for the Economy showed that the Spend Local scheme resulted in a £8,938,166 by the people of Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council area.

A total of 1,399,051 NI residents were issued with a Spend Local card with 99.6% of the cards being activated. The total spend from the whole of Northern Ireland was £136.6 million.

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Minister for the Economy Gordon Lyons said the “High Street Scheme has been a huge success and achieved exactly what it set out to do”.

“It brought shoppers back on to the High Street and has helped our local retail, hospitality and service sectors start their journey of recovery from the devastating impact of the pandemic.

“While the vast majority of verified applicants to the scheme received their Spend Local cards before the scheme closed, I am aware that a small proportion of verified applicants, less than 0.4%, did not receive a card while some others encountered difficulty activating and using their card.

“I apologise to those applicants but would like to make clear that there were a number of contributing factors such as issues with the postal service and errors in applications such as incorrect addresses being entered resulting in cards being sent to the wrong address.

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“I can assure you that my officials used maximum flexibility and worked until the very last second to ensure as many people as possible received a card and were able to go out and support local businesses.

“Recently, in recognition of the fact that some verified applicants did not receive a card while some others encountered difficulties activating and using their card, I announced that I would be making remedy payments to eligible applicants.

“I would ask that everyone show some patience while my officials finalise the setting up of an automated system to administer these remedy payments. It is anticipated that the remedy payments will be made in late-March/early April, ” said Minister Lyons.