Grants available to more businesses

Horsham firms which didn’t meet the criteria for the government’s first round of Covid-19 small business grants may be in luck.

The district council has some £1.43m for a new discretionary small business fund scheme and plans to hand out grants of between £2,000 and £10,000 by the end of June.

The aim of the scheme is to help firms affected by the COVID-19 lockdown, with payments based on their size and evidence of the negative financial impact of the pandemic.

At a meeting of the cabinet on Thursday June 4, leader Ray Dawe said: “The discretionary grants fund scheme has got various businesses quite animated – and I can understand why – and I think frustrated by the fact they see some businesses receiving grants under the government scheme and others not doing it.

“I have been responding to a fair number of those people who feel they should have got something they didn’t.”

Mr Dawe said 420 firms were rejected from the first scheme because they did not meet the criteria set by government.

Applications for the new scheme are now invited and will close on June 16.

A spokesman said applications would be ‘evaluated on their merits rather than on a first come, first served basis’.

The meeting was told that the last scheme saw more than £28m handed out to Horsham businesses.

The remainder of that pot – £917,000 – will be added to another £513,000 from the government to make up the £1.43m for this latest fund.

While the council can give out grants of as much as £25,000, this would mean only 57 businesses could be helped.

In line with other authorities, Mr Dawe said the upper limit would be set at £10,000 to enable the council to ‘help as many of our small businesses as we can’.

A spokesman said applications would be assessed between June 17 and 22 June and payments would be made in the week beginning June 24. To apply to the fund, log on to horsham. grantapproval.co.uk