Chancellor announces new £4.6bn support package for businesses

Following the announcement of a third national lockdown by the Government on 04 January, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a new range of financial measures to help support businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors and protect jobs through the tighter lockdown restrictions.

This follows the Prime Minister’s announcement last night that these businesses will be closed until at least February half-term in order to help control the virus, and, together with the wide range of existing support, provides them with certainty through the spring period.

Top-up grants

It is expected that over 600,000 businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors will be supported through one-off-top-grants worth £4bn in total across all nations of the UK.

The one-off top-ups will be granted to closed businesses as follows:

• £4,000 for businesses with a rateable value of £15,000 or under
• £6,000 for businesses with a rateable value between £15,000 and £51,000
• £9,000 for businesses with a rateable value of over £51,000

Discretionary fund

A further £594m discretionary fund will also be made available to Local Authorities and devolved administrations to support other impacted businesses that are not eligible for the new grants.

This comes in addition to £1.1bn further discretionary grant funding for Local Authorities, Local Restriction Support Grants worth up to £3,000 a month and an extension of the furlough scheme.

Further information

Business support is a devolved policy and therefore the responsibility of the devolved administrations, which will receive additional funding as a result of these announcements in the usual manner:

• The Scottish Government will receive £375m
• The Welsh Government will receive £227m
• The Northern Ireland Executive will receive £127m

The full news story can be found here.