As restrictions ease and businesses reopen their doors, Mayo County Council is seeking to work with local businesses to assist them in getting their business back on track.
The council stated: "Dedicated teams have been established within the Municipal Districts to work with business owners in towns and villages to aid them to reopen to a new way of doing business.
"Simple design guidance and advice on matters such as managing customer queues, etc is available from our offices or website or by contacting the staff in the Municipal District offices for advice.
"If you own a café, restaurant, hotel or bar, where you serve food to the public that can be eaten onsite, you can apply to Mayo County Council for a licence to put tables and chairs on the footpath/public realm space outside your premises. As part of this initiative, Mayo County Council will consider refunding of the licence fees paid for outdoor tables and chairs for the year.
"In some cases, Mayo County Council can consider the temporary assignment of suitable, adjacent parking spaces or other outdoor spaces for use by a trading business for the location of tables and chairs (and suitable weather protection, if required ).
"Where a parking space or spaces are to be temporarily reassigned to provide additional seating for the premises, the fee as specified previously, will be used to offset the cost of the provision of planters and attractive planting to enclose the space."
Peter Duggan, Interim CE of Mayo County Council, added: "As a local authority we want to work with local businesses to support them as they prepare to reopen their doors in these times. The opportunity to provide seating outside premises will be of interest to many business owners and we are pleased to provide the expertise of our architects, planners and other officials through our Municipal District structures, to discuss possible options.
"We recognise that these are difficult times for the hospitality sector and for that reason, the cost of licences will be refunded, or, where a parking space is being repurposed as a seating area, it will be used to offset the cost of enclosing the space from traffic in a safe and attractive manner."
If you are a business owner interested in this initiative, you can contact your Municipal District Office. Details relating to the Supporting Business through the Public Realm scheme together with an application form is available on www.mayo.ie
