Businesses across the country are facing difficult times as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The Government has therefore announced an unprecedented package of support to protect jobs and support businesses across the UK during the coronavirus outbreak. There is a wide range of financial support available to firms of all sizes.
Details can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus/business-support.
Businesses can use the simple business support finder to check whether they are eligible for financial support:
https://www.gov.uk/business-coronavirus-support-finder
The Government’s economic plan is one of the most comprehensive in the world and millions of businesses are benefiting.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak has announced a range of measures for businesses and workers to protect them against the current economic emergency:
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme:
Businesses across the UK can put employees on a period of temporary leave (furlough) and apply for a government grant to cover 80% of those workers’ usual monthly wage costs, up to a cap of £2,500 a month.
The scheme is now available until the end of October. The scheme has already protected 7.5 million workers and almost 1 million businesses.
Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS):
• The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme allows eligible self-employed individuals to claim a taxable grant of 80% of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single installment covering 3 months, and capped at £7,500 in total. Around 95% of people who receive the majority of their income through self-employment could be eligible.
• To benefit from SEISS, you need to receive at least half of your income from being self-employed and be earning under £50,000 in profits.
• You can use HMRC’s eligibility checker to see if you could benefit from the scheme.
Statutory Sick Pay:
• The Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme will repay employers the current rate of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) that they pay to current or former employees for periods of sickness starting on or after 13 March 2020.
VAT deferrals:
• The Government has given the option to defer VAT payments to UK VAT-registered firms, for payments due alongside VAT returns until the end of June. If you’re a UK VAT-registered business and have a VAT payment due between 20 March 2020 and 30 June 2020, you have the option to either defer the payment until a later date, or pay the VAT due as normal.
• HMRC will not charge interest or penalties on any amount deferred.
Business rates holiday and eviction protection:
• The Government has introduced a business rates holiday for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors and nurseries, meaning eligible properties in England will pay no business rates this year. This
relief is worth almost £10 billion. [Note: business rates are devolved so this apples to England only – the Devolved Administrations have their own schemes and will receive Barnett
consequential funding.]
• Commercial tenants who cannot pay their rent because of coronavirus will be protected from eviction.
Grants:
• The Small Business Grant Fund (SBGF) provides businesses with a £10,000 grant per property, for each of their properties, which is in receipt of Small Business Rates Relief or Rural Rates Relief. This scheme is only applicable in England.
• The Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant Fund (RHLGF) provides businesses with grants of up to £25,000 per property, for each retail, hospitality or leisure property with a rateable value below £51,000. This scheme is only applicable in England.
• Local authorities are contacting eligible businesses directly to arrange grant payments.
If a business believes they are eligible and has not yet heard from their local authority, they should get in touch with them to ask about these payments.
• On 1 May, the Government also allocated up to an additional £617 million to local authorities to enable them to make discretionary grants to small businesses in their communities, which have been excluded from the SBGF and RHLGF because of the way they interact with the business rates system. This only applies in England.
• We encourage businesses to look out for their local authority’s version of the Discretionary Grants Fund, and to contact their local authority for more information in due course. This only applies in England.
Loans:
• The Government’s Bounce Back Loans Scheme provides loans of up to £50,000 to small businesses, with an 100% government-backed guarantee for lenders. These loans will be interest free for the first 12 months and
businesses can apply online with a short and simple form.
• The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme is available for loans or other forms of finance of up to £5m.
• The Government will pay interest and any fees for the first 12 months, and will provide the lender with an 80% guarantee to support the lending.
• This scheme is available UK-wide.
• The Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) supports large businesses with an annual turnover of over £45 million per year to apply for up to £25 million of finance.
Future Fund:
The Future Fund will issue convertible loans between £125,000 to £5 million to innovative companies, which are facing financing difficulties due to the coronavirus outbreak.
If your business needs to hire now, there is help available for you to fill your vacancies quickly. You can access help to connect skilled and experienced people to your vacancies quickly. Keep job descriptions as generic as possible to make sure you don’t miss out on great people with transferable skills. Visit https://employerhelp.dwp.gov.uk/ to find out more.
A greater London based dental practice owner of Love Teeth, Dr. Kunal Patel is an example of how the government business support schemes are helping local businesses.
Dr Kunal Patel donated all their PPE to the NHS, including 3,000 pairs of gloves and 750 face masks. Love Teeth has continued to pay full salaries to staff but they don’t meet the requirements for the furlough scheme, which pays 80 per cent of staff wages. However, thanks to support from Lloyds Bank, he has been successful in receiving £250k from Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) to help cover the practice’s costs during shutdown.
Dr Kunal Patel owner, Love Teeth, said: “As dentists, we’re acutely aware of the risks of contracting viruses in our work. We realised that by keeping our doors open we weren’t helping the fight against Covid-19.
“Keeping our team and the community safe was the priority and we had to think of the greater good. It was a very nervous time, but with Lloyds support, I know we will survive.
“My staff are like part of the family”. It would have been disastrous if we had to lose any of them.
“Now the whole team stands ready to be deployed when called upon.
“We want to help our NHS colleagues, but we also want to reassure our patients that we will be back to complete their treatments and serve our community again.”
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