The Council has now received information on the two grants that will be available to businesses from 1st April 2021.
There will be the new Restart Grant and a revised Additional Restrictions Grant. Businesses will only be eligible to receive one of these types of grant, not both.
Restart Grants
This will support businesses with a business rates account. This is a mandatory scheme and the amounts paid are not at the discretion of the Council.
The primary principle of the Restart Grant scheme is to support businesses that offer in-person services, where the main service and activity takes place in a fixed, rate-paying premises, in the relevant sectors. This is different to previous schemes which were linked to rate reliefs or closures mandated in the regulations.
There are two strands to this grant and depending on your business you will receive one of the following:
Strand 1 – non-essential retail
Strand 1 – non-essential retail – hospitality, accommodation, leisure, personal care and gyms
IMPORTANT! The government has announced that further information is required from each business making an application for either of the two available grants from April and that additional verification checks have to be carried out on every single application BEFORE any payments are made which will delay payments. In view of this, you will be required to complete a new application. We are hoping to commence payments from 19 April 2021.
Full details for the scheme and the online application can be accessed from our COVID-19 Business Support Page
Additional Restrictions Grants
We are advised that the Government is going to provide additional funds to the Council which we intend to use to provide support to businesses who are not eligible for restart grants.
We are awaiting advice of how much funding we will receive and so at present are unable to finalise a scheme and application process.
IMPORTANT! The government has announced that further information is required from each business making an application for either of the two available grants from April and that additional verification checks have to be carried out on every single application BEFORE any payments are made which will delay payments. In view of this, you will be required to complete a new application, further information and the online application will be put on the Council’s COVID-19 Business Support Page when it becomes available. If you have not already done so, please subscribe to our business support emails so you are kept updated.
Please be assured that we appreciate the difficulties that businesses are facing and we are sorry that the process will be delayed by the new checks that have to be done before we can pay eligible businesses, this is required by the Government and is not within our control.
We will continue to do our best to get payments issued as quickly as possible and ask that you do not contact us unless absolutely necessary as this diverts the limited staff we have away from dealing with grant applications.