Getting cash to businesses is a priority right now as more close every day – some never to reopen –but the Small Business Grant Fund scheme is just one of the support measures that have so far failed to deliver.

There’s a big difference between making a headline-grabbing business support announcements and actually delivering them.

On Tuesday the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) issued guidance to local authorities explaining the criteria and conditions around the grant schemes. With its frequent references to hereditaments and acronyms upon acronyms defining the different eligibility criteria, the BEIS instructions wouldn’t pass a plain English test.

In the heat of the crisis, the department’s civil servants are falling back into old habits, particularly with an eye on preventing fraudulent claims. Support measures need to be as simple and easy to implement as possible if they’re going to be effective.

The 12-page grant funding schemes PDF introduces two new acronym-heavy schemes empowering local authorities to dispense grants to businesses under the following criteria:

• Small Business Grant Fund (SBGF) – £10,000 available to those eligible for the small business rate relief scheme or rural rate relief scheme– essentially firms occupying properties with a rateable value of less than £15,000.
• Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant (RHLG) – enhanced grant created for businesses that qualified for the Expanded Retail Discount announced all the way back in late January. Retail, hospitality and leisure businesses with a rateable value of up to £15,000 will get a grant of £10,000, while those with property valuations between £15,000 and £51,000 will be eligible for £25,000.

Some of the key conditions affecting both schemes include:

• Effective from 11 March 2020. Businesses that were dissolved before that date will not be eligible
• Only available for companies in England
• Premises occupied for personal uses will be excluded, along with car parks and parking spaces
• Local authorities can choose to withhold or award grants where they feel their valuations for a property were inaccurate on 11 March 2020.

Nor will the small business grants be available for home-workers who do not pay business rates. I understand that the Chancellor may introduce new measures to support the self-employed later today.

What needs to happen now – and quickly - is for local authorities to set up administration systems with the relevant data fields to satisfy BEIS oversight requirements and contact eligible businesses…

…before its too late.

Noel Guilford