City of York Council is reassuring York’s businesses that they will be paid as quickly as possible – and the vast majority of businesses don’t need to take any action.
Thousands of York businesses qualify for grants relating to Tier 2, Tier 3 and now national lockdown. The council will use existing records to pay qualifying businesses without the need for new application forms.
This should speed the payment process up, meaning that York will once again be one of the quickest authorities in the country to get grants into business’ bank accounts.
The council is still awaiting full details and a timeline for receiving the latest government grants, including one-off top-up grants of between £4,000 and £9,000 for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses.
Any further discretionary funding will be distributed through the Additional Restrictions Grant.
The eligibility for the ARG is under review, and will be discussed at the decision session for the executive member for finance and performance, in consultation with the executive member for the economy and strategic planning, on Thursday 18 January.
The council created this scheme to support businesses which don’t qualify for other grants and aren’t or forced to close, but are severely impacted by the restrictions.
Payments team on it
Most qualifying businesses will already have received a grant from the council under the first national lockdown or since the tier system was introduced.
Those businesses do not need to contact the council. Its payments’ team is working out each business entitlement and will pay grants up to the first review date of current restrictions (February 15) as soon as possible.
Councillor Nigel Ayre, executive member for finance and performance, said: “We know our business simply want some certainty in this ongoing, extremely challenging period.
“That’s why our team is once again pulling out all the stops in order to repeat the quick payments of last year.
“We’re hoping to do this without the need for any additional applications to make this even quicker and easier.
“We are now managing many different grant schemes covering different levels of restrictions for different lengths of time, and still need to follow government anti-fraud processes before we make any payments, so we appreciate your patience.”
If you haven’t applied for a grant recently, check what you may be eligible for and apply straight away.
Businesses who have ‘fallen through the cracks’ can contact the council at at [email protected] .