Cash grants for the hospitality sector

1 year ago by Oliver Atkinson

The emergent Omicron variant of COVID-19 has come at a particularly poor time for the hospitality and leisure sector. With Christmas just around the corner and New Year fast approaching, these are usually some of the busiest times of year for many high-street businesses, but instead many are facing cancelled bookings, lower foot-traffic and staffing problems as Omicron forces people to stay inside again this winter.

The government has once again announced a series of grants that will become available through local authorities in order to help support those businesses that are struggling in the hospitality and leisure sector. Let’s take a quick look through what is on offer:

• A one-off targeted grant of up £6,000 per rateable premises
• £102 million of discretionary funding for local councils to support other businesses affected by Omicron
• SSP and COVID-19 related absences will have their costs covered by the government with businesses with less than 250 employees, with the reintroduction of the Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme
• £30 million extra to the Culture Recovery Fund

The premises grants will be distributed at different amounts dependent on the rateable value of the premises in question, as per the table below:

There has not yet been much word from the councils on how they expect to distribute the grants, however we expect this to be much the same process as the previous rounds where applications were made online. We recommend you keep an eye out for any news or communications from your council as to when the grants in your area become available and make your application quickly once they do.

The Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme will become available again ‘mid-January 2022’, but as of yet no date has been announced for this or if the eligibility criteria will be updated to included newer businesses.

If you have any questions, feel free to call one of our Brighton Accountants here.