Category: Business Support

New grant support was announced 9 September that offers businesses in areas subject to local lockdowns a measure of financial support. In a news story posted to the GOV.UK website HM Treasury said:

Businesses in England required to close due to local lockdowns or targeted restrictions will now be able to receive grants worth up to £1,500 every three weeks, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Steve Barclay told MPs today. To be eligible for the grant, a business must have been required to close due to local COVID-19 restrictions. The largest businesses will receive £1,500 every three weeks they are required to close. Smaller businesses will receive £1,000.

Payments are triggered by a national decision to close businesses in a high-incidence area. Each payment will be made for a 3 week lockdown period. Each new 3 week local lockdown period triggers an additional payment.

Other details published in the same announcement include:

• Any businesses still closed at a national level (e.g. nightclubs), will not be eligible
• If a business occupies a premises with a rateable value less than £51,000 or occupies a property or part of a property subject to an annual rent or mortgage payment of less than £51,000, it will receive £1000
• If a business occupies a premises with a rateable value of exactly £51,000 or above or occupies a property or part of a property subject to an annual rent or mortgage payment of exactly £51,000 or above, it will receive £1500
• Local authorities will also receive an additional 5% top up amount of business support funding to enable them to help other businesses affected by closures which may not be on the business rates list. Payments made to businesses from this discretionary fund can be any amount up to £1500, and may be less than £1000 in some cases.
• Local authorities will be responsible for distributing the grants to businesses in circumstances where they are closed due to local interventions
• Further eligibility criteria may be determined by Local authorities
• As with other Covid business grants, local grants to closed businesses will be treated as taxable income

It is implied in this announcement that businesses in affected areas will need to contact their Local Authority to secure funding under this new support initiative.

Regional considerations

The UK Government has guaranteed that the devolved administrations will receive at least £12.7 billion on top of their March Budget settlements to help them with their response to COVID-19 this year, with £6.5 billion for the Scottish Government, £4.0 billion for the Welsh Government and £2.2 billion for the Northern Ireland Executive. The Barnett formula will apply in the usual way to any additional funding provided to departments in relation to this intervention.

Kickstart Program Opens In Wales

Under the new £2 billion Kickstart scheme, employers will be able to offer young people on Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment, state-subsidised work placements for six months. The Kickstart scheme is available to qualifying 16 – 24 year olds in England, Scotland and Wales.

Commenting on the launch of the scheme in Wales, the Secretary of State for Wales, Simon Hart, said:

We have taken unprecedented action to secure Wales’s economic recovery from the pandemic. More than 500,000 Welsh jobs have been protected through the Job Retention and Self Employed schemes while over 40,000 businesses in Wales have received more than £1.4 billion in loans.

Protecting, supporting and creating jobs is at the heart of our plan for recovery. Aimed at young people, the Kickstart scheme will make sure no-one is left behind as we get the Welsh economy moving again.’

The government will fully fund each “Kickstart Program” job by paying 100% of the age-relevant National Minimum Wage plus associated employer National Insurance contributions and employer minimum auto-enrolment pension contributions for 25 hours a week.

Businesses of all sizes looking to create quality jobs for young people can apply and there is no cap on the number of places. There will be a simplified application process for employers offering fewer than 30 placements.

The government will also help by paying employers £1,500 to set up support and training for people on a Kickstart placement. The scheme will initially be open until December 2021 but may be extended.

Back in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was just starting the government announced new emergency measures to help those businesses and self-employed people affected by COVID-19 through the Time To Pay service. A dedicated COVID-19 helpline opened on 11 March 2020 and remains available via webchat and phone. HMRC has made up to 2,000 experienced call handlers available to support businesses concerned about meeting their tax liabilities due to coronavirus.

HMRC says that all businesses and self-employed people in financial distress, and with outstanding tax liabilities, may be eligible to receive support with their tax affairs through HMRC’s Time To Pay service.

These arrangements are agreed on a case-by-case basis and are tailored to individual circumstances and liabilities. Agreements reached with HMRC allow businesses and individuals to pay off their debt by installments over a period of time.

HMRC will usually only offer taxpayers the option of extra time to pay if they think they genuinely cannot pay in full now but will be able to pay in the future. If HMRC do not think that more time will help a taxpayer then they can require immediate payment and start enforcement action if payment is not forthcoming.

Taxpayers cannot appeal against HMRC’s decision not to grant additional Time To Pay but can make a complaint if they are unhappy about how the way they were treated by HMRC.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently published further detail on its views on the law in relation to cancellations and refunds during the pandemic. It remains their view that a consumer will generally be entitled to a refund when they have paid money in advance for services or goods that cannot be provided because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Given the evolving situation, the CMA has provided more detail on issues such as the difference between lockdown laws and government guidance, and their impact on cancellations and refunds.

For example, if contracts are partially affected by lockdown laws then, depending on the circumstances and the scale of the impact, consumers may be entitled to a refund or a price reduction.

Additionally, the government has issued guidance in place of, or in addition to, lockdown laws. As these are guidance and not law, whether a consumer is entitled to a refund will vary according to the specific circumstances.

For example, if a package holiday is cancelled in light of Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice against travel to the relevant country, there are specific protections which mean that consumers should be entitled to a full refund.

In other situations, it will not always be the case that a full refund is due because government guidance does not create legal restrictions and will not necessarily mean that a contract cannot be performed.

The CMA has also written to certain package travel companies involved in group trips to explain its view on when customers should be offered a refund.

This follows complaints about some package travel organisers advising customers that they are not entitled to a refund as their contract was between the company and a group, such as a school, rather than made directly with the customer. It is the CMA’s view that the Package Travel Regulations apply to these group travel packages, and that individual customers should be entitled to a refund if they have paid money in advance for a group trip that is cancelled because of the pandemic.

The CMA’s statement on consumer protection law, setting out its views, is designed to help consumers understand their rights and to help businesses treat their customers fairly. Ultimately only a court can decide how the law applies in each circumstance.

Witnessing Wills Remotely

A statutory instrument will be issued September 2020 that will legitimise the witnessing of wills by video conferencing methods. This extension to the witness process will apply from 31 January 2020 for two years.

The new law will amend the Wills Act 1837 to stipulate that where wills must be signed in the ‘presence’ of at least two witnesses, their presence can be either physical or virtual.

An increasing number of people have sought to make wills during the COVID-19 pandemic, but for people shielding or self-isolating it is extremely challenging to follow the normal legalities of making a will – namely it being witnessed by two people.

To reflect this, the will-maker could use the following example phrase:

‘I first name, surname, wish to make a will of my own free will and sign it here before these witnesses, who are witnessing me doing this remotely’.

Witnessing pre-recorded videos will not be permissible – the witnesses must see the will being signed in real-time. The person making the will must be acting with capacity and in the absence of undue influence. If possible, the whole video-signing and witnessing process should be recorded and the recording retained. This may assist a court in the event of a will being challenged – both in terms of whether the will was made in a legally valid way, but also to try and detect any indications of undue influence, fraud or lack of capacity.

The process of choosing a video conferencing solution for your practice can be a little hit and miss due to the variety of solutions on offer. Practitioners have adopted the use of web conferencing to:

• Deal with staff matters
• Organise client meetings
• Organise partners’ meetings

In fact, much of the activity previously undertaken face to face is now accommodated by an old-fashioned telephone call – sometimes with a video link – or video conferencing software.

The problem is, there is a bewildering array of software to choose from.

Practitioners still looking for a solution could take a look at a recent report issued by Software Reviews that ranks alternatives based on specific criteria. Google “SoftwareReviews web conferencing”.

Or you could ask clients or IT contacts what they recommend.

Truthfully, the differences that seem to separate the leading brands are not that great and as long as the software you choose does the job, why change.

What is clear is that video conferencing is here to stay. It is doubtful that the present restrictions on face-to-face contact will be eased significantly any time soon.

It’s a type of online meeting where two or more people engage in a live audio-visual call. … In business, people typically use video conferencing to communicate and collaborate within and outside an organization.

An ongoing issue for motorists is the need to have two tyres on the pavements to avoid unduly restricting road space for wider vehicles and emergency services in narrow streets.

Unfortunately, this can have knock on effects for parents with buggies or disabled vehicles that need to use these pavement areas.

To address these issues the Government has launched a consultation. In their recent press release on this issue the Department for Transport said:

Pavements could be made safer for people with disabilities, and families, under new proposals to ban antisocial parking unveiled by the government today (31 August 2020).

Parking on pavements disproportionately affects people with visual or mobility impairments, those assisted by guide dogs, and wheelchair and mobility scooter users. More than 95% of wheelchair users and people with visual impairments say they had problems with vehicles parked on pavements.

Three options are proposed in the consultation launched today – improving the traffic regulation order process to make it easier for councils to prohibit pavement parking in their areas, giving councils powers to fine drivers who park on paths, and a London-style nationwide ban on pavement parking.

However, there is still a major role for cars and other private vehicles, so any future plans will need to take this into consideration.

Pavements is a hard surface that’s covered in concrete or asphalt, like a road or a driveway. … In the US, pavement most often refers to a road or street, but it can also mean any paved surface, like a sidewalk or paved area in a park. The word has a Latin root, pavimentum, “level surface that’s been beaten firm.”

A reminder, if one was needed, is that we seem to be heading for a no-deal Brexit from 1 January 2021. One of the issues we will all have to confront is the raft of regulation that we will need to observe from this date if travel to EU and certain affiliated territories.

The latest advice on the GOV.UK website says:

Travel to the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein will change from 1 January 2021. Things you may need to do before you go include:

• checking your passport has enough validity on it
• get travel insurance that covers your healthcare
• checking you have the right driving documents
• organising pet travel – contact your vet at least 4 months before you go

There are more things to do if you are travelling for business. For example, going to meetings and conferences, providing services (even with a charity), and touring art or music. Additionally, on the day you travel, you will need your passport to both:

• have at least 6 months left
• be less than 10 years old (even if it has 6 months or more left)

If you do not renew your passport, you may not be able to travel.

It is particularly important you get travel insurance with the right cover if you have a pre-existing medical condition.

The Eat Out Campaign to Help Out scheme to encourage the struggling restaurant sector was announced as part of the Chancellor’s Summer Economic announcements. The scheme was designed to help restaurants recover from the effects of the lockdown and has been a great success.

The scheme was launched on 3 August 2020 and was available every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The last day you can benefit from the scheme is 31 August 2020. In the first two weeks of the scheme over 35 million meals were enjoyed across the country with over 85,000 restaurants taking part.

Meals that were eaten in at any participating restaurant on the designated days were discounted by 50% up to a maximum discount of £10 per head including children. The discount also applied to non-alcoholic drinks but could not be claimed on alcoholic drinks or service charges.

One restaurateur commented that:

‘The response to Eat Out Campaign to Help Out has been phenomenal. Even though venues are operating at reduced capacity and with smaller teams following more thorough safety measures, we’re still managing to serve a similar number of customers on Mondays – Wednesdays that we were this time last year. That makes a huge difference to independents like us.’

The scheme aimed to help protect the jobs of the hospitality industry’s 1.8 million employees by encouraging people to safely return to their local restaurants, cafes and pubs where social-distancing rules allow. Around 80% of hospitality firms stopped trading in April, with 1.4 million workers furloughed, the highest of any sector.

It will be interesting to see if any further measures are announced to help this sector once the scheme closes.