THE co-owner of a west of Scotland tourism business has hit out after a funding bid for an industry-wide staff training scheme she developed was refused, declaring that a shortage of labour was posing a major threat to the future of the sector.

Sarah Heward, who has owned The Real Food Café in Tyndrum with husband Alan McColm for 17 years, devised the Hospitality Unlimited training and rewards platform to tackle the acute shortage of staff that has become critical since Covid and the “unmitigated disaster” of Brexit.

The industry-led scheme, which was to pilot in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park area, aims to help businesses attract people by offering rewards and access to training.

But despite being awarded initial funding of £45,000 from the Scottish Government’s Community Led Local Development Fund, an application for £100,000 to Stirling Council under the Shared Prosperity Fund, the vehicle for the UK Government’s levelling up agenda, has been refused.

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Ms Heward, who has been working on the project for the last 18 months, said she was “very taken aback” by the decision, having been “very much expecting to get what we had applied for, or at least the majority of what we had applied for”. She told The Herald: “It was a bit of a shock.”

Ms Heward is a regional food tourism ambassador for Stirling and Forth Valley, one of 24 appointed by industry body Scotland Food & Drink, and with The Real Food Café firmly established, has been dedicating more and more time in recent months to projects to help the industry.

The idea behind Hospitality Unlimited was to “do something to mitigate some of the effects of the staff shortages” which are blighting the sector.

Ms Heward said: “Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster. We deserve better, and the industry deserves better.”

Based on ideas that had worked well at The Real Food Café, and following dialogue with leaders across industry, the scheme aims to foster a “culture change” across the sector and how it is viewed. A package incorporating well-being, training and financial benefits was pulled together, which was to be made available via an online portal.

“The idea being that we would sell this to businesses, but sell it a super-affordable price,” Ms Heward said. “We did not want to give it to people for free, because in my experience if you give things away for free people don’t value them. And if you are trying to create a culture change, people have to buy into that, literally buy into it.

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“But it would have to be quite heavily subsidised because the businesses aren’t going to get there on their own.”

The business plan drafted by Ms Heward attracted a “huge amount of support” among industry leaders, including Marc Crothall of the Scottish Tourism Alliance and Kate Nicholls of UK Hospitality and politicians.

She calculated that she would need £100,000 to undertake a pilot and was pointed in the direction of the Shared Prosperity Fund by Alyn Smith, her local MP, in the spring of 2022. Forth Valley Food & Drink made the application to the fund on her behalf in time for the summer deadline, with £125,000 of funding targeted.

While she waited on a decision, £45,000 to kick-start the project was provided via the CLLD fund. A project manager was hired, a brand was created and domains for the website were registered, while a working party was set up. Market research as also been carried out.

“Then, a few days ago, the decision finally came down about the Shared Prosperity Fund… and we got nothing,” Ms Heward said.

“So, here you have a project that has had £45,000 of public money spent on it, [and] a huge amount of time [invested in it], has massive support from industry leaders and politicians, but it won’t happen unless we get some money in by the end of the first week in June.”

Ms Heward said ultimately £250,000 will be needed to roll out the project, and is now hoping for a “white knight” in the tourism and hospitality industry to save it.

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“But I have to say it is pretty poor that this problem is so evident – everybody and their grandma can see it – and yet there doesn’t seem to be anyone with any power that is even talking about this, never mind supporting it,” she said.

Ms Heward acknowledged that there were likely to be many causes competing for a share of the Shared Prosperity Fund and emphasised that she did “not want to be appearing to blame Stirling Council”.

She said: “It is a bigger problem. It is a problem that needs leadership from the top. This needs somebody that is really serious about Scottish tourism and hospitality to champion it and to say, “get a grip, let’s give this project a go”, unless there are better projects. I am certainly not aware of any.”

It is understood that Stirling Council received funding requests totalling around £3 million across 35 projects. It had £1.16m available to be distributed under the Shared Prosperity Fund.