Next week’s partial reopening of hospitality represents a huge moment in the sector’s recovery, nowhere more so than in Liverpool.
From Monday, pubs and restaurants will be able to serve groups of up to six outdoors, with hairdressers and non-essential retail also allowed to reopen.
With an economy dependent upon this type of trade, businesses, residents and visitors to Liverpool are now being urged to do their bit - and have been told “we’ll only make it out if we work together”.
Below, BusinessLive hears from the city’s economic chiefs ahead of the big day - and speaks to the combined authority’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram about the latest on the region's economic recovery.
Bill Addy, chief executive of the Liverpool BID Company, said the region should view Monday as "starting a six week countdown" to the next step on May 17, when the city centre can "open more fully".
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He said: "Everyone has worked so hard to keep to the guidance and this next step sees us being able to do more but for business, visitors and people just out and about, to keep our city safe we can't let down our guard. It's all of our responsibility, not just one place or one person, it's on everyone.
"Regular testing, wearing face masks, using the hand gel in store, using the test and trace app when we go to a venue and keeping our distance, these are all things we should still be doing while we're out and about."
He urged those invited for a vaccine to go - and highlighted the importance of encouraging vaccine uptake among the business community.
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He added: "Liverpool city centre welcomes everybody, we cannot allow people to feel that they aren't part of this recovery or process.
"As we move into this next six weeks we will see more people in our city centre, we're committed to improving the public realm, in continuing to support our businesses across retail, culture, leisure, hospitality and in the commercial sector.
"We have had such a challenging time and while we can see the light at the end of the tunnel we've just got a little further to go yet. We'll only make it out if we work together."
Paul Cherpeau, chief executive of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, said Monday was "another step in the right direction", but had an important warning for firms.
He said: “As we emerge from lockdown we look forward to our businesses across the leisure and retail industries in particular opening their doors.
“This feels like another step in the right direction, but we must remain vigilant, make use of the testing available to all businesses and support the ongoing vaccination programme.
“We should also support Liverpool City Council in the events testing currently being developed across both leisure and business and look forward to the next quarter with hope and optimism.”
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Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor for the Liverpool City Region, said he agreed with the Government's proposed roadmap dates that start with the April 12 easing.
He said: "I'll always call the Government out when I think they've got things wrong. But on this occasion, on balance, they've probably got just about the right level of caution in terms of not wanting to see huge increases in transmission rates. Don't forget, we've seen some of the highest in the whole of Europe in our area than our city region. So we don't want to go through that again, and have to see further restrictions or even a lockdown.
"So the way in which they've gone about it with the roadmap to leave a gap between each of the stages, so that they can evaluate and assess whether it has a negative impact on those indicators, I think is the right way to do it."
He said he was “absolutely convinced” the region will return to the growth seen prior to March 2020.
Speaking about how the city region’s firms have dealt with the setbacks and blows caused by Covid-19, he said: “Many of them will be really, really suffering, and some, unfortunately, so much so that they don't exist anymore - they've gone out of business.
“And that's heart-breaking because they were viable businesses that could have been saved.
“The Government has failed to do its job. The best way that you can secure an economic recovery for 海角视频 PLC is to make certain that as many businesses as possible got through this period and survived, and having an ecosystem there that can start to be built very quickly and hit the ground running.
“Instead, it chose certain people to support - for example there are 3 million self-employed and freelancers - the very heart of the economy - that it didn't offer for whatsoever.
“But we tried to do our best in the Liverpool city region with the combined authority.
“We funded businesses that I am absolutely certain without our funding, wouldn't have been there in a few months’ time when we do get through recovery and things start to pick up again."
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"The Government really should hang its head in shame at some of the things that it hasn't done. but despite them, we'll get through, and at some stage we'll get beyond recovery and into growth. I'm absolutely convinced.”
Mayor Rotheram was also quizzed on the combined authority’s £150m, 40-project, 120,000-job plan for the region's Covid recovery.
When asked whether that ambitious proposals were realistic, he said: "It's realistic if the government were to support all of the projects, but we didn't expect they would go 'right, okay - here's the cheque. Get on with then'.
"What we have to do is develop a business case around each of those projects that the government will find irresistible. And this is the bit where I don't think people outside really understand the amount of spadework that has to go in to developing a business case for an individual project that passes muster with national government, because they can't just hand out taxpayer money.
"So we're doing all of those hard yards now, to get the projects that I see the Government would find very, very difficult to refuse - if it's genuine about doing some of the things that it tells us it is, such as levelling up, innovation and R&D, rebalancing the economy and creating a green economy."
So with the city region having been hit so hard by the pandemic, with firms going under and many people losing their jobs, are we out of the woods yet?
Mayor Rotheram said: “We talk to businesses all the time, and certainly business organisations and umbrella groups are still fearful of what comes next, because we know that there's going to potentially be furlough for another four or five months yet.
“But we need to get the economy going so that those businesses can start to do what they need to do, which is obviously to trade.
“And that will depend on so many external factors. Footfall and attitudes to public transport among others.
“There's a whole host of interconnected factors. But again, I'm fairly certain that we can help those businesses to survive, if the government wants to work with us, if it wants areas like the city region, really, to become one of the economic drivers of the country.
“It just needs will from their perspective, because we've got all the plans here.”