A new initiative, Forlocal, launched by Herefordshire businessman Chris Giddins allows the public to support their favourite local businesses by buying vouchers for use when they are able to re-open.

While thousands of small businesses don’t have the systems in place to offer vouchers, Mr Giddins’s experience in his core business Uniqodo, a B2B voucher tech platform working mainly with travel clients, means he and his team have the expertise to create a service for small local businesses.

He said: “The early days of this crisis saw many of us encouraged to ‘buy vouchers’ for the businesses we knew to be struggling. But for most independent shops or restaurants, it’s not that simple. We thought we could use our experience, and offer the technology to small companies and give them something to help them right now.

“If a customer buys a voucher now the money can be passed on to a business straight away. But they may not necessarily want those funds at the moment, so they can open an account to sell vouchers, but have money held back to see what happens. “After all, no one knows for sure whether they will be here in a month or two’s time, they have no idea whether they are going to be reopening.

“Herefordshire has lots of pubs and cafes, and we’re still not out of the woods. We want to provide tools to those businesses. We take care of all the technical bits, so that local businesses can focus on getting the word out to their communities and encouraging customers to get behind them or pay it forward to the NHS. This way, people can support the businesses they love in such difficult times and local businesses can continue to thrive.”

In Herefordshire, says Chris, the dream is for Forlocal to be for more than the current situation. “We need to provide a platform that extends into the future, a marketplace for small businesses’ offers, deals and services.

Although Uniqodo’s office is in the south east, Chris reports that he is now spending the majority of his time in Herefordshire where he moved a couple of years ago to be closer to his partner’s family, who live in Church Stretton and Malvern. “It’s been a massive change moving from Surrey, but we love it,” he added.

Any UK business can sign up for free, allowing customers to purchase gift vouchers for themselves or to donate to local NHS staff.

Vouchers can be redeemed when businesses re-open and the NHS donations will be kept ‘on tab’ by each business for healthcare staff to use when they can.