The Welsh Government have announced two new separate grant schemes. Rapid Reaction (Local Lockdown) Fund, worth £60m, will be targeted at areas hit by this month’s rolling local lockdowns and offers:
- Grants of £1,500 will be available to retail, leisure and hospitality businesses with a rateable value of between £12,001 and £51,000 that have seen a material impact on their business as a result of local restrictions.
- Grants of £1,000 will be available to small businesses with a rateable value of £12,000 or less and who can similarly demonstrate a material impact on their business.
- 5% of this funding will be made available to local authorities to support businesses materially impacted by local lockdown, but not registered to pay business rates, with discretionary grants of up to £1,500.
This second new phase of the Economic Resilience Fund will see £80m being made available to help businesses develop and secure the employment of their workforces through business development grants, but will require firms to commit some of their own resources in return. The business development grants will be open to businesses of all sizes:
- micro-businesses (employing between 1 and 9 people) will be able to apply for up to £10k on the condition they match this with their own investment of at least 10%;
- SMEs (employing between 10 and 249 people) will be able to apply for up to £150k. Small businesses will be required to match this with their own investment of at least 10% and medium businesses with at least 20% of their own funding;
- large businesses (employing 250+ people) will be able to apply for up to £200k on the condition they match this with their own investment of at least 50%.
The Eligibility Checker for companies to find out if they can access funding from the third phase of the ERF will be live during the week commencing 5 October. Details of the announcements made by the Chancellor last week can be found here: https://www.bevanbuckland.co.uk/resources/blog/winter-economy-plan/