BUSINESS RATES & RECOVERY LOANS
HIGH streets were handed a £12billion boost yesterday to help them recover from the pandemic.
The Chancellor handed beleaguered firms a £6.8billion business rates holiday, extending relief until April 2022, as well as £5billion of ‘restart grants’ – worth up to £18,000 each.
Rishi Sunak announced a threemonth extension to the break for shops, bars, restaurants and other leisure firms, cutting the tax to zero until the end of June.
For the following nine months until the end of March 2022, firms will have their business rates bill discounted by two-thirds.
The Treasury will also hand out £ 5billion of restart grants to ‘ help businesses reopen and get going again’, with non-essential retailers able to claim up to £6,000 per shop.
Hospitality, leisure, gyms and personal care businesses will be eligible for grants of up to £ 18,000 – reflecting the longer they been closed for.
Beauty entrepreneur Elisabeth Bester, 42, is among those ‘grateful’ for the recovery grants. The mother-of-two runs the Marlow Face and Body clinic in Buckinghamshire.
She has lost around 90 per cent of her revenue during lockdown. Mrs Bester said: ‘I am very grateful for the restart grants as I think they will plug the immediate issues for lots of salons. They will certainly help with bills and managing cash flows.’
Helen Dickinson, of the British Retail Consortium, said: ‘The Chancellor has taken steps to avoid the business rates cliff edge, and restart grants provide a vital injection of funding during this extremely challenging period.’
Mike Cherry, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the Budget would ‘help many small firms with their final push through to September’. The handouts will be backed up by a slew of loan guarantees, allowing firms of ‘any size’ to borrow between £25,000 and £10million. Asda, Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsbury’s said they would not accept the rates relief and will pay the tax in full for 2021/22.