Business Grants – How do I get them?

As part of the most recent raft of Business Support announcements, further Business Grants will be available. These will be available for businesses in England that are forced to close either by local or national restrictions.

Details on these are sparse at the moment, but given that they are being distributed by Local Authorities, that’s perhaps not a surprise!

So what do we know?

The grants have to go to businesses that were forced to close under locally or nationally imposed restrictions. If this applies to you, and you have business premises, then you are entitled to a grant. As reported previously, the level of the grant will depend on the rateable value of your premises.

Local authorities may have no licence over WHO they give the grants too but they DO get to decide HOW they give funds. This may be based on their own business rates records, but there may well be a need for you to apply for the grant. Some council websites that I’ve looked at are ‘developing an application form’ or ‘application process’.

Central Bedfordshire Council, our area, have just announced that they plan to launch their scheme on the 20th November, and have provided a link to more information, which is helpful. (If you’re local to us, you can find that information here.)

How do you find out what your authority is doing?

• Watch their website like a hawk! The sooner you are aware and can get your application in, if required, the sooner you are likely to receive funds.
• Call them if there’s nothing on the website. We all know these announcements were a surprise to pretty much everyone but the PM and the Chancellor, so your Local Authority will have had to put something together pretty quickly. It’s likely to take time but you need to know the timing, so there’s northing wrong in asking.

I don’t have premises – can I get anything?

If you don’t have business premises, there’s still an opportunity to receive grants; local authorities have been given funds to make discretionary payments, so there is still hope!

There are also organisations that are offering grants for all sorts of things. One client recently has gained funding for all the hardware for a new starter, so there are options, but you need to do your research to find them. Sadly, as most of these are regional we cannot advise you where to look, but there are options if you do a little searching! It could well pay off; the kit our client bought was a top of the range Mac, so was definitely worth a little leg work to find the grant.

Do please let us know whether you make progress on getting hold of these grants. Hearing back from those that were slightly ahead was really helpful last time round, so it’s always great to hear from you.