The benefits of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card for housing organisations

By Nicola Hutchinson, Programme Officer at Scotland Loves Local

The Scotland Loves Local Gift Card launched in 2021 as a gift to the entire community. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

With gift card programmes that are unique to each region of Scotland, the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card is effectively a local currency, with limitless potential to boost local economies, support local businesses, and maximise value for the whole community through a vast consumer proposition which means that it can be used to focus on a number of priority areas.

For example, the gift cards have been used to drive consumer spend to towns and cities across Scotland, provide support for a variety of sectors and successfully disburse funds to people in need through cost-of-living support schemes.

In fact, to date, we have worked with six local authorities across Scotland to utilise the gift card as a means of supporting people through the cost-of-living crisis by pre-loading the Scotland Loves Local Gift card with a specific allocation of funds that can be spent be people in need in the community with participating businesses. Taken together, redemptions made via the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card have injected over £13.6 million into local economies across Scotland to date through community disbursement schemes, and the model is being replicated in other sectors too.

One of the most innovative uses of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card to date has been in the corporate sphere, with many organisations choosing to replace or supplement existing staff reward schemes with the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card as a community-centred alternative - locking money into the local area whilst celebrating employee achievements and long-service awards.

Scottish companies making this local, sustainable choice injected more than £300,000 into regional economies across the country last year by rewarding and incentivising staff with the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card.

This is a trend that is growing outside of Scotland too. Across the UK, 81% of companies offer non-cash rewards to staff. What’s more, it’s a popular employee incentive. Research undertaken by Scotland Loves Local last year found that nearly three-quarters of staff prefer a multi-store gift card rather than other types of staff reward.

With a vast range of businesses registered to accept the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card, your team can enjoy the very best that their local area has to offer - great days out, a trip to the hairdressers, fantastic food and drink, and hundreds of independent and high street retailers. Grocery stores and supermarkets are also widely accepting the gift card, which can give your staff a helping hand during the cost-of-living crisis.

Even better, through HMRC’s Trivial Benefits Allowance, you can gift all your employees with the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card tax free!

The card is a way of living the values of the wider Scotland Loves Local campaign, encouraging people to help build stronger, more sustainable communities by supporting the people and businesses around them to think, choose and spend locally.

You can find out more about the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card, and how you can be a part of it, at: www.scotlandgiftslocal.com.