SRU doles out almost £400,000 in ‘hardship’ payments to 82 clubs
● Cash used to retain staff during crisis and get grounds ready for playing again
Scottishrugbyhasannounced a raft of funding awards to keep the grassroots game alive amid the current pandemic but concedes that these are precarious times.
Applications for “hardship fund” payouts have now been decided and are in the process of being paid out to clubs who have been starved of rugby activity and clubhouse income since the start of the coronavirus crisis.
The SRU’S director of rugby development Sheila Begbie said in a video press conference yesterday: “Today we’re announcing that 82 of the clubs have got the investment they wanted. We’ve invested just under £400,000 into the clubs through the Club Hardship Fund.
“There were four categories of support the clubs were looking for – premises, people, utilities and grounds – and the two biggest areas were people and grounds.
“In terms of people, clubs were looking for support for their staff, using the government’s job-retention scheme to keep their staff and looking to Scottish Rugby to pay the additional 20 per cent. We’ve done that with a number of clubs, so they’ve managed to retain their people.
“In terms of grounds, a lot of the clubs are using external contractors to maintain their pitches and so on. So from our perspective it’s been about supporting clubs to ensure their pitches are maintained in order that, when we’re ready to restart rugby, we can actually do that.”
The hardship fund has been allocated £500,000 but just over a fifth of that has been held back as the situation develops. Full details on which clubs have been awarded funding can be found on the SRU website.
Begbie added: “We had a pretty good, even spread of investment across the five Scottish Rugby regions. Thirty -eight of the clubs received what they had asked for. Some of the clubs came in with a significant ask over the normal maximum of £5,000 that wasn’t within the criteria, and maybe some were looking to future-proof their business a wee bit more.
“The feedback from clubs has been incredibly positive, and they welcomed our proactive approach.
“I think the highest investment we had out of all the investment we made into clubs was over £11,000, so it went from £333 to just under £11,000.”
Quizzed on which club had received that top award, the SRU later said in a statement: “There were 36 applications submitted for over £5,000, of which 27 were approved.
“Only nine of the 36 were awarded the full amount they requested. The common areas clubs were applying for in exceptional circumstances were around utilities costs and support with staffing, many of which were managed through the Job Retention Scheme in reducing overhead costs.
“All claims over £5,000 were reviewed on a case by case basis.”
Begbie continued: “The outstanding balance of circa £120,000 will be reinvested in the game, and we’re working on proposals at the moment that will further support the clubs. We should be able to share that detail in the next couple of weeks.
“It’s a really fluid situation. We can’t continue to go like this, because we’re going to end up running out of money. Like every other business, Scottish Rugby has been majorly impacted financially by Covid-19.
“We’re working on the route map and we’ll issue guidance to clubs as we go along. In terms of a restart to rugby we’ll be very much dictated to by the Scottish Government’s route map.”