Love Local Tradies: Assisting Blue Mountains’ tradespeople to secure work

Blue Mountains City Council has launched a new initiative to help local tradespeople secure more local work.

Love Local Tradies – an extension of Council’s successful Love Local campaign that launched in 2020 to assist local businesses after bushfires and then COVID-19 – launched on 1 August. It is rolling out in two phases.

In the first phase Council is urging local tradespeople (builders, plumbers, electricians, concreters and landscapers etc) to register with Council.  Once verified, the tradespeople will be listed under ‘Trades’ on the Love Local Business Directory map which is accessible by the community.

In the second phase (from October 2020), Council will notify the tradespeople who have been listed in the Love Local Business Directory, to bid for Council contracts.  Mayor Mark Greenhill said Council was committed to supporting local businesses who are doing it tough, given the downturn in the local economy following bushfires and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been a difficult year, and this is yet another way Council can assist,” he said.

“We’ll connect local tradies with residents who are looking for tradespeople, via our Business Directory map. We’ll then use that database to notify local tradies of available Council contracts over the coming year.”

In the past year Council has been assisting local businesses in upskilling in tendering, so they can become more familiar with bidding for Council work.

In 2019 Council offered free face-to-face procurement training to local bush regeneration, walking track and landscaping businesses, to encourage them to submit tenders.

In 2020, during COVID-19, Council has offered two online procurement training sessions to enable other small to medium scale businesses to increase their skills in developing successful tender applications for working with Council.

“Council will be offering small scale packages of work later this year that could be suitable for mountains-based tradespeople,” Mayor Greenhill said. “We want to invest in our local trades and services, to enable money to stay in the local economy.”

Local tradespeople who would like to be listed in Council’s new directory should fill out the Business Directory form. Once verified, businesses will be listed on the Business Directory map.

For further information email questions to [email protected]  or phone Council’s Economic Outcomes team on 4780 5543.

The Business Directory is only open to businesses within the Blue Mountains Local Government Area and it is the responsibility of the business to send updated contact or operating details to Council so the Business Directory can be updated.