Support for Businesses - Business Help | Scotland Food and Drink

Business help

The findbusinesssupport.gov.scot website is the best way to find the information you need in relation to Coronavirus (24/7).

If you can’t find the information you’re looking for on the site above, call the business helpline number on 0300 303 0660.

Guidance hospitality & tourism businesses

For companies that have a hospitality side to the business (restaurant, café, bar), guidance and a risk assessment for safe operations can be found here.

Social distancing within food and drink business operators

Click here to view the latest guidance from Food Standards Scotland.

Food Standards Scotland's guidance is aimed to assist the food and drink sector in following government guidance on infection prevention and control measures against COVID-19. It provides further clarification on:

the application of physical distancing requirements
cleaning and disinfection procedures
government advice on facemasks and face coverings applies to food businesses.

Covid outbreak guidance

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) has created a document on managing Covid outbreaks. It will brief your business on how to prepare for an Incident Management Team (IMT) should you face that development and the kind of information you will be expected to provide. Full information can be found here.

Coronavirus (COVID-19): advice for employers and employees from ACAS

Staying at home and social distancing
Vulnerable people and those at high risk
Self-isolation and sick pay
Furlough and if a workplace has to close
Using holiday
If an employee needs time off work to look after someone
If someone has coronavirus symptoms at work
Good practice steps for employers
More coronavirus advice

Click here to visit the information hub

Skills Matching Service (SMS)

During the Covid-19 pandemic it is vital that key rural and land-based businesses — including farms and businesses with animal welfare obligations — are able to access key workers and can continue operating.

To meet this need, Lantra Scotland is creating a Skills Matching Service which will put businesses and potential employees with relevant skills and experience in touch with each other.

Lantra is asking organisations (such as Colleges and Universities) that might have students or staff skilled in key areas and may be available to help out during this difficult time, to register. Registration is straightforward process, and can be done from here.

Testing

The UK government has established a network of COVID testing facilities. This programme runs alongside the existing programme of testing in the NHS for clinical purposes and testing of key workers in health and social care.

Testing will allow people - anyone aged 5 and over with symptoms - to know whether or not they have the virus.

When to get tested

You should get tested in the first 3 days of coronavirus symptoms appearing, although testing is considered effective up until day 5. No testing should be undertaken after day 5, unless it’s for a specific reason which will be agreed on a case by case basis by local microbiologists.

If you are self-isolating because a person you live with has symptoms, you can refer them for testing. By testing the household member(s), we can be much more certain that you should either be self-isolating or can return to work.

How to arrange a test

Negative tests and returning to work

Even if a worker has had a negative result, it’s important to still apply caution. If everyone with symptoms who was tested in their household receive a negative result, the employee can return to work if their work cannot be done from home, providing they are well enough, and have not had a fever for 48 hours.

If, after returning to work, they develop symptoms they should follow the NHS Inform guidance and self-isolate. Employees should discuss their return to work with their employing organisation.

Full information issued by the Scottish Government can be found here.

Test and Protect

Test and Protect is Scotland’s way of putting into practice the test, trace, isolate, support strategy. It will prevent the spread of coronavirus in the community by:

identifying cases of coronavirus through testing
tracing the people who may have become infected by spending time in close contact with them
supporting those close contacts to self-isolate, so that if they have the disease they are less likely transmit it to others

If physical distancing (2 metre rule) is implemented in a business, the working assumption is that co-workers of a positive case are not deemed ‘close contacts’ so would not have to self-isolate.

A ‘close contact’ is defined as:

Those that are living in the same household as a case.
Face to face contact with a case for any length of time within 1 metre, including being coughed on, a face to face conversation, unprotected physical contact (skin to skin), or travel in a small vehicle (e.g. car or van) with a case.
Extended close contact (between 1 and 2 metres for more than 15 minutes) with a case.