The government is making £20m of grants available for small business to help them through the COVID-19 pandemic!
Owner managers will be able to access these business grants from their local authority to the sum of between £1,000 and £5,000, for the purposes of expenditure on any of the following:
The grant can also cover the purchase of equipment that is seen to adapt or adopt new technology that assists your businesses in trading during the pandemic. Being a grant means the support is provided by the government hence there is no financial contribution expected by small businesses.
The UK government uses the EU definition of a small business, namely one with a turnover of £1.4m - £7m (subject to exchange rate conversion from Euros) and 11 - 50 employees on the payroll.
The grant comes at an opportune time in that many small businesses have re-opened albeit under extensive new rules and regulations to ensure social distancing. This is a new burden resulting in additional costs for many organisations that's likely hitting the bottom line and therefore profitability. The timing of this grant could therefore prove very useful to owner managers.
A launch date has yet to be announced, be sure therefore to bookmark this page as we will update it as soon as this information becomes available.
The government grant for small business will be administered by regional growth hubs. There are 38 of them in all which we have listed in the table below for you (courtesy of the Local Enterprise Partnership "LEP" Network) so that you can access the relevant hub to your location.
LEPs are voluntary partnerships between local authorities and businesses. They were set up in 2011 by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills with the aim of understanding local economic issues with a view to driving economic growth and job creation in local areas.
Each LEP has been awarded a minimum of £250,000 to get the scheme moving.
This is just one of many government initiatives to help small businesses. Make sure you check these other schemes to ensure you're making maximum use of all the help currently available during these unprecedented times.
This post was created on 20/08/2020.
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