More businesses gain access to Covid relief fund
EXCLUDED businesses in Newcastle will finally be given access to desperately needed Covid relief funds, it has been confirmed.
Newcastle City Council bosses were accused of “burying your heads in the sand” last week for not having made grant funding available to home-based or mobile businesses, when other councils in the North East had performed U-turns to help those firms cover their lockdown losses.
But the authority, which previously said it was unable to help as it had already allocated all the money it had been given from the Government’s Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) scheme, revealed on Tuesday that extra cash has now become available.
Newcastle has received an extra £1.7m of ARG money from the Government, £900,000 of which the council plans to use to offer £1,500 grants to businesses that have been excluded from financial relief so far, such as driving instructors, childcare providers, mobile hairdressers, and window cleaners.
Council leader Nick Forbes said civic centre officials were “working round the clock” to set up the ‘Springback Fund’ and he was “grateful that Government has listened to our concerns”.
The city council has also been given another £19.2m from the Government’s Restart Grant Scheme. That is aimed at larger businesses in the hospitality, leisure, and personal care sectors and will be distributed through grants of between £2,500 and £18,000.
More than 100 businesses have joined under the banner of the LA7 Excluded, claiming they had been “unfairly and deliberately” labelled ineligible for Covid relief funding.
Rachel Douglas, one of the leader’s of the LA7 Excluded campaign, was thrilled with the news, with Newcastle’s support now added to further schemes either launched or announced in Gateshead, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland, and County Durham.
She added: “We have fought for what we believed was right. The majority of our campaign group hasn’t been based in Newcastle, but we took the decision to fight for the LA7 area as a whole and not to give in until the last council had released some funds.”
The council says it will use another £300,000 of the new ARG money to support businesses like newsagents, takeaways and nurseries that have been open but were significantly impacted by reduced footfall.
A further £500,000 had already been committed towards helping taxi drivers, the food and drink sector, and city centre businesses.
Coun Forbes, who has accused LA7 Excluded campaigners of “making increasingly aggressive and personalised attacks” on social media, had previously said that a further allocation of ARG funding was not expected until the end of June.
The Labour council leader said on Tuesday: “We have done everything within our powers to reduce the impact by distributing Government support as quickly and efficiently as possible to the point of need.
“To date more than £90m has been distributed to businesses – but we know pressure on them has been immense and the need for support is huge.”
Coun Nick Cott, the city’s Lib Dem opposition leader, said the ARG confirmation was welcome “but it shouldn’t have taken this long”.