Lockdown Grant Details - COVID-19 Business Update 05/01/2021

Tuesday, 5 January, 2021

This email is part of a regular update I send out to businesses in Scunthorpe. If you have not received this email directly from me please click here to subscribe to my COVID-19 Business newsletter.

Note 08/01/2021: There's a further update released today here.

Happy new year and I hope you have had a good Christmas with your loved ones.

You will have heard of lockdown coming in place from 00:00 on Wednesday 6th January. You can find the latest rules here.

One-off top-up Grant

Businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are to receive a one-off grant up to a maximum of £9,000. You can read the announcement here. This additional grant will come in the form of:

£4,000 for businesses with a rateable value of £15,000 or under
£6,000 for businesses with a rateable value between £15,000 and £51,000
£9,000 for businesses with a rateable value of over £51,000

This will be on top of the monthly local restriction grants (ie the grants given during lockdown or Tier 3 for those in hospitality). I have been working with NLC on this since its announcement this morning and they are awaiting further details on this and will look to implement this for local businesses without the need to re-apply, as soon as possible.

The monthly local restrictions grants amount will remain the same as before. If you received this payment for the previous Lockdown you should automatically receive it for January and February.

Discretionary Grant

Businesses forced to close in December that were not entitled to local restrictions grants should have received a discretionary grant for the December period.

If you did not apply for the previous discretionary grant and would like to apply now please also get in touch with NLC via their email above.

Furlough update

The guidance on the employees you can put on furlough has been updated to reflect those who were unable to work, including those unable to work from home or working reduced hours because they:

are clinically extremely vulnerable, or at the highest risk of severe illness from coronavirus and following public health guidance
have caring responsibilities resulting from coronavirus (COVID-19), such as caring for children who are at home as a result of school and childcare facilities closing, or caring for a vulnerable individual in their household

You can find the full guidance here.

I would like to once again stress that it is important for you to consider furloughing staff who are clinically extremely vulnerable if they will be put at additional risk at work.

Access to childcare for critical workers

You can find the updated list of Critical workers and vulnerable children who can access schools or educational settings here.

Work in progress

Those who have written to me in December will know that I have been working throughout the month to lobby both the Government and NLC for further business support.

I have had discussions with the government and NLC on the key issues that have been raised with me so far, such as

cases where businesses were allowed to open but were impacted due to their close supply-chain relationship with businesses forced to close ie hospitality
the additional support needed for businesses forced to close (for example, when the fixed business cost for a closed business is larger than the government support)
in some rare cases, businesses with no rateable value through no fault of their own have been negatively impacted

I can assure you that these issues have been acknowledged and that NLC has been doing their best to explore options on what they can do to support our local businesses.

Nationally I formally backed the concerns I have raised with colleagues by tabling questions to BEIS and the Treasury to look into additional support for hospitality, back when we were in Tier 3. This has thankfully been met through the current one-off grants.

I feel that we are at the point where the government vitally needs to consider an "exit plan" for businesses asked to close. There have been setbacks, largely caused by the new, more contagious strain, which have disrupted the progress that has been made through the Tier system. Granted this will be dependent on the vaccine roll-out, but I feel that our businesses need as much notice as possible on what to expect.

This issue has been raised as recently as today, during a meeting between colleagues and myself with the PM earlier this evening. I will, of course, continue to work with colleagues on this.

As ever, please do not hesitate to get back in touch if there is anything you would like me to raise or for me to help with.

Take care,
Holly