Coronavirus Support for Businesses – What is Available?

The government has put together a £330 billion rescue package for businesses affected by the Coronavirus outbreak. The bailout package includes several financial measures to ease the impact on the economy of the outbreak across the UK.

But what help can business owners and the self-employed get? The current package of measures put together by the government to offer financial support to businesses are detailed on this page and more details on how to apply and eligibility can be found here: gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/covid-19-support-for-businesses

• a Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

Under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, all UK employers will be able to access support to continue paying part of their employees’ salary for those employees that would otherwise have been laid off during this crisis.`

• deferring VAT and Income Tax payments

Supporting businesses by deferring Valued Added Tax (VAT) payments for 3 months. If you’re self-employed, Income Tax payments due in July 2020 under the Self-Assessment system will be deferred to January 2021.

• a Statutory Sick Pay relief package for SMEs

Bring forward legislation to allow small-and medium-sized businesses and employers to reclaim Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) paid for sickness absence due to COVID-19. The eligibility criteria for the scheme will be as follows:

• a 12-month business rates holiday for all retail, hospitality, leisure and nursery businesses in England

100% business rates holiday for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England for the 2020 to 2021 tax year.

• Support for businesses that pay little or no business rates – small business grant funding of £10,000

The government will provide additional Small Business Grant Scheme funding for local authorities to support small businesses that already pay little or no business rates because of small business rate relief (SBBR), rural rate relief (RRR) and tapered relief. This will provide a one-off grant of £10,000 to eligible businesses to help meet their ongoing business costs.

• Cash grants for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses

The Retail and Hospitality Grant Scheme provides businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors with a cash grant of up to £25,000 per property.

For businesses in these sectors with a rateable value of under £15,000, they will receive a grant of £10,000.

For businesses in these sectors with a rateable value of between £15,000 and £51,000, they will receive a grant of £25,000.

• the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme offering loans of up to £5 million for SMEs through the British Business Bank

The temporary Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme will support SMEs with access to loans, overdrafts, invoice finance and asset finance of up to £5 million and for up to 6 years.

• a new lending facility from the Bank of England to help support liquidity among larger firms, helping them bridge coronavirus disruption to their cash flows through loans

Under the new Covid-19 Corporate Financing Facility, the Bank of England will buy short term debt from larger companies.

This will support your company if it has been affected by a short-term funding squeeze, and allow you to finance your short-term liabilities.

• Support for businesses paying tax: Time to Pay service

All businesses and self-employed people in financial distress, and with outstanding tax liabilities, may be eligible to receive support with their tax affairs through HMRC’s Time To Pay service.

These arrangements are agreed on a case-by-case basis and are tailored to individual circumstances and liabilities.

Derbyshire County Council Derbyshire business emergency relief fund

Derbyshire County Council have also announced that in addition to and to ‘compliment’ the government’s coronavirus funding packages, their emergency relief fund for the county’s smallest businesses is now in place:

Businesses with nine or fewer employees and sole traders will now be able to apply online for up to £500 in emergency support to help to cover the initial hardships that companies might have as a result of the pandemic.

Businesses will need to be registered in Derbyshire, be able to evidence a loss of income as a direct result of the coronavirus outbreak and fulfil the other criteria laid out online in order to apply. The fund will be open until the 17th April 2020 and has a limited number of grants available.

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The number of self-employed workers has been on the rise in recent years and accounts for 15% of the workforce in the UK – or around *4.8 million. There has been continued pressure on the government to bring in financial measures to help the self-employed , in line with PAYE employee; we’ll update this page if anything is announced and any useful links.

*Source: gov.uk