Grants to help many businesses
The district council has received funding from central government to provide grants to businesses to alleviate in part the financial pressures caused by various lockdowns and restrictions.
The grants are to provide support towards ongoing costs and can be awarded to eligible businesses. Different grants are available to both business rate payers and non business rate payers.
Grants for businesses rate payers are available for those businesses required to close during the national lockdowns in November and January and also for those businesses that had to close during the Tier 2 and Tier 4 restrictions that were in place in December.
The Government has also provided funding for a oneoff closed business lockdown payment for the current lockdown period.
The council has also introduced a scheme to provide grants for businesses that are non business rate payers and also for those businesses that, whilst not required to close, have been financially impacted by the national and local restrictions that have been in place since November.
There are many options for businesses affected by the restrictions imposed by the Government to limit the spread of Covid to look at and apply for. The value of the grants available depends on the period and type of restrictions in place (National or local Tier 2 and Tier 4) and can be as much as £13,500 for the current lockdown period.
Eligible businesses can receive more than one grant for different periods of restrictions, so a business which had to close in November and again in January can apply for grants for both periods.
Whilst we have already paid out over £2.6m in grants since the November restrictions came into effect, we are concerned that, despite publicising these grants on social media and contacting as many companies as possible, not all eligible businesses have applied for the grants they are entitled to.
We wish to provide support to as many businesses as possible during these difficult financial times and I would therefore ask if you could publish this letter to further promote applications.
There are formalities and processes to undergo for these grants as one would expect when public money is involved, but we have provided an online application portal to make this as easy as possible and information on the different schemes and how to apply can be found at https://www. horsham.gov.uk/coronavirus/ coronavirus-businesssupport-grants Thank you.
CLLRPAULCLARKE Cabinet Member for Finance, Economic Development and
Parking