CV19 £10,000 Small Business Grant Scheme

Newsletter Archive

 🏢 CV19 Business Grant Scheme

0

 

Hi 

I want to share with you an update on how things are progressing with the Small Business Grant Scheme. If you know you don't qualify for this, scroll down to see a few other updates which might be useful 👇👇👇

 

Of all the government support available, this is THE BIG ONE. I'm pleased to say we have heard from a couple of clients who actually received the cash in the bank yesterday 🙌

So WHERE IS YOUR MONEY?

To recap, two grants were announced by the chancellor last month:

The Small Business Grant Scheme

This enables small businesses to claim a £10,000 non-repayable grant, regardless of whether they've been directly affected by CV19 or not.

The eligibility criteria are:

- You were receiving Small Business Rate Relief as at 11th March 2020. This excludes businesses - like Blue Penguin - who rent a serviced office where you aren't the ratepayer.

- Your business occupies the property; commercial landlords may not qualify if they don't have a "business" and it's purely rental income.

- You must be based in England; other schemes available in W/S/NI.

 

NB: If you recently changed premises before 11th March, the council may not have your details on file so get in touch with them in case they award the grant to the outgoing occupier! 

 The Retail & Hospitality Grant Scheme

There is also a £25,000 non-repayable grant for SOME retail & hospitality businesses. You can't claim this AND the £10,000 above. The criteria for this are:

- Your business is Retail, Hospitality or Leisure. Get in touch if you're not sure whether you qualify.

- Your rateable value is between £15,000 and £51,000. If it's lower than £15,000 you'll likely still qualify for the £10K above.

 

How Do I Claim?

In our update from 21st March we told you that "the local authority will write to you if you are eligible"...and that was about as much as anyone knew! We were lead to believe these grants would be sent out automatically but nothing is ever that simple.

Fast forward ten days and pretty much every council's website has been updated with an online claim form, which is very encouraging although it means ACTION IS REQUIRED on your part. Regardless of whether you've been contacted by your council, get on their website RIGHT NOW and start your claim!

We've been made aware that as of yesterday, clients in North Lanarkshire and Southwark had received the cash in their bank account 😁

Even if you've had a letter asking you to send your details by email or, shock horror, by the actual postal system [I'm looking at YOU, Mid Devon and North Somerset... 👀] do still check your council's website before you start trying to remember what size stamp you need for an A4 envelope up to 25mm thick and less than 100g...

 

What Information Will I Need?

Before you get too excited, go and dig out the following information, you'll not be able to claim without them:

Business rates reference number as per your bill - even if you qualify for SBRR you'll still have a £nil bill with the crucial reference number.

- VAT and Companies House reg numbers, if applicable

- Business Bank Account Details

- Scanned copy of recent bank statement/paying in slip

 

From here, the council will review the application and, from what we've seen so far, could turn around the application in less than a week 🤞

Please keep in touch and let me know which grant you qualify for (if either), and also when your cash arrives.

 

BEWARE OF SCAMS

You'll see above that, quite rightly, you need to supply a lot of confidential information to apply for this grant. That information would be very valuable to criminals!!

I have seen at least two fake forms which have been created to try and get people to fill them out unwittingly. It doesn't help that some councils' claim forms are rather rudimentary, created with Microsoft Forms which your 8-year-old child could probably knock together over lunch. 🤦‍♂️

So, however desperate you are for this grant, please don't click ANY link in an email to claim support. Navigate directly to the council website and continue your application from there.

 

Other Updates...

 

Tax Investigation Insurance

I've just come off the phone to Croner, who underwrite our Tax Investigation Insurance. I wanted to check if HMRC enquiries relating to any of the new measures announced will be covered by the policy.

You'll appreciate that these measures didn't exist three weeks ago so it would not be possible for them to be already included in any policy. But I'm pleased to say they have confirmed that YES if you have insurance in place and there's an enquiry into anything CV19 related, the costs WILL be covered by the policy. 😎

Hats off to them, really, when you consider how many commercial insurers are refusing to cover Coronavirus-related claims because the policy was taken out before the virus even existed.

Let me know if you would like cover (only available to clients I'm afraid, but if you already have an accountant then speak to them now and check their policy will cover CV19).

 

Furlough of Staff [aka Job Retention Scheme]

Lots of questions about this. Lots. Seriously, it's about 40% of the calls we are getting at the moment. So I'm not going to go over the details of what we know - and what we don't know - at the moment because the details are quite complex and may apply differently for each business.

Instead, please just call me if you'd like to talk about how this will work in practice for your business. You can't backdate furlough so if you're thinking of laying off staff, let's speak sooner rather than later.

July 2020 payments on account

On March 21st we explained your July 2020 payment on account was being automatically deferred for the self-employed.

We've now had confirmation that this has been extended to ANYONE who has a PoA falling due on 31st July this year, whether they are self-employed or not. It'll now be deferred until 31st January 2021.

But, this will be the same day as your usual January tax payment so careful planning is going to be required to make sure you have the funds available to make BOTH payments.

We expect HMRC to take a much less lenient approach to requests to defer an already-deferred payment.

 

And Finally...

The image at the top of this page is courtesy of my neighbours' kids who have been doing their art lessons from home. It gave me a little bit of hope in what is a very dark time.

I'll be in touch over the weekend to ask what we can do to help promote and support your business if you are still open, or what we can do when you are able to re-open.

 

Remember you can click here to see the archive of previous CV19 emails, in case you've just joined us, or use the red banner at the top of www.blue-penguin.co.uk to book a free of charge CV19 support call with me, if you haven't already.

In the meantime, stay safe, stay tuned and for goodness' sake stay indoors if at all possible.

 

Peter and the Blue Penguin team. 💙

 

Smallprint: this is a massively fluid situation. The above is our understanding right now, but things are changing daily. Please don't take any of this as legal advice, yada yada. We'll do our best to keep you up to date with more information as we get it. Please call us for clarification on any points above.

 

Blue Penguin Chartered Accountants • 16 Claremont Drive, Taunton TA1 4JF

You received this email as a customer or subscriber of Blue Penguin Chartered Accountants. Click here to leave mailing list

Sent via

SendPulse