Published on Tuesday, 27 October 2020 at 11:01:46 AM

The City of Vincent is empowering businesses and the community to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic through the development of the Vincent Rebound Plan.

As much of the world still grapples with the devastating effects of coronavirus, West Australians have been fortunate to move their focus to rebound and recovery.

The City has developed a plan to support economic and community rebound by making it easier to do business, further cutting red tape and creating opportunities for people to connect.

The Rebound Plan is focused on creating vibrant places that support social interaction, enabling business to thrive, supporting our community and ensuring the City remains agile and accountable.

This will be achieved through a range of actions, including:

• improving communication with business owners
• making it easier for businesses to start up and diversify through policy and regulation change
• partnering with government agencies and inner-city local governments to support small business and attract visitors and tourism
• driving ‘support local’ and ‘buy local’ campaigns
• simplifying the process to host events and activations
• beautifying our town centres and main streets
• building awareness of local community groups, volunteers and sporting clubs to increase participation and membership 

“Local businesses, sporting clubs, community groups and households were all impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly during the staying home period,” said Mayor Emma Cole.

“But through the hardship we also saw an enormous amount of community support, with more people shopping locally, checking in on their neighbours and volunteering to help those in need.

“Businesses adapted so they could keep their doors open, people re-connected and spent more times in parks and kids helped make our streets more vibrant with rainbow art.

“We want to build on the resilience and the positives that came out of this challenging situation as we move into the next phase of rebound and recovery.

“The Victorian experience proved how quickly things can change in this new COVID world, but right now we have the opportunity to move forward and make the most of our current circumstance.

“The Vincent Rebound Plan is an action orientated, live document that will be updated as we continue to learn and grow through this period.”

The Rebound Plan considers and responds to the results from the State-wide Community Resilience Scorecard survey, which was a Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries supported initiative designed to help local governments respond to COVID-19.

The survey found the Vincent community considered the ‘recovery of the local economy’ and ‘mental health’ to be the COVID-19 impacts of greatest concern.

Vincent residents ranked ‘economic recovery and employment opportunities’ and ‘community health and wellbeing’ as the priority areas for the City to address moving forward.

Case Study

After weathering the COVID-19 storm earlier this year, the future is looking bright for former MasterChef Australia contestant Jenny Lam and her family business Bunn Mee.

Ms Lam was forced to temporarily convert her Vietnamese Street Food restaurant into a takeaway-only venue in line with physical distancing restrictions on March 15.

She was able to welcome dine-in customers again in July, but could only have eight diners inside at a time because of the size of her store.

The approval of a temporary parklet allowed Ms Lam to add more alfresco dining and start to experience a sense of normality again.

Despite the challenges she has faced as a business owner this year, Ms Lam says she feels positive about the future of Leederville and the future of her business.

“The future of Bunn Mee is extremely bright,” she said.

“We’ve gone from strength to strength and even the fact we never closed during the worst of COVID is testament to how strong our business and the team is.

“Leederville will bounce back undoubtedly, with new apartment buildings and the ABN Group moving in 2021, bringing more locals to the area!”

Ms Lam said she believed people had been embracing local businesses even more since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I know I have been more conscious of supporting and buying local wherever I can and our loyal customers have done the same,” she said.

Ms Lam opened Bunn Mee with her mum Kim Tieu, dad Minh Nguyen and sister Linda Le in November 2018.

The family is looking forward to celebrating the business’ second birthday next month.

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