From YorkBID – Important message regarding Coronavirus relief grants:
Grants are on their way – but you must respond with key info next week.
The council has today (Friday 27 March) written to all business that may be eligible for the £10,000 grants for small businesses that pay little or no business rates, and grants of £10,000-£25,000 for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. They are required to collect certain details, including VAT registration numbers, before processing payments via bank transfer. The letters give details of how to supply this information through a secure web form, available from 9am Tuesday 31 March. We appreciate that many of you may not be able to access your business premises (although they’ve used contact addresses where they have them) to collect the letter, so please set a reminder in your calendar to go to visit www.york.gov.uk/BusinessSupport from 9am on Tuesday to access the form. We will also widely publicise the form next week.
The council has implemented the business rates holiday, and its extension holiday to include nurseries, estate agents, letting agents and bingo halls.
Rent deferrals and the government backed loans and overdraft facilities remain the quickest ways to ease pressure if you are facing serious cashflow challenges while awaiting grants.
They are setting up a new, secure grant payment process from scratch. This will involve distributing up to £30m of grant funding to around 3500 businesses, including many who may never have made a business rate payment to us before.
The government has shared further details of the scheme and information we need to collect from businesses, including VAT registration details, before processing any payments.
This will also give us the opportunity to collect current bank details and start to make payments in early April.