Category: Business Support

At the end of July, the government announced £20m of new grant funding was to be allocated to Growth Hubs, specifically to help smaller businesses that have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to access much needed professional support.

These grants will provide businesses between £1,000 and £5,000 to help them access or adapt new technology and other equipment as well as to pay for professional, legal, financial or other advice to help them get back on track. The grants could be used, for example, to cover certain support services provided by accountants.

The exact amount of the grants will be decided at a local level but are expected to typically be up to £3,000. Under certain circumstances the maximum grant of £5,000 may be awarded.

The support will be delivered from the England European Regional Development Fund. The funding has been allocated to Growth Hubs within each Local Enterprise Partnership and the scheme is expected to open shortly. It should be noted that this funding is extremely limited and available on a first come, first served basis. There will be no obligation for businesses to contribute financially as the grant will be fully funded by the government.

To establish a viable grant programme, the government has set a minimum of £250,000 for all Local Enterprise Partnership areas. The allocation of resources will be reviewed as the grant funding is delivered. The funding is being provided to address immediate needs and all grants must be awarded by 28 February 2021 and all activity fully completed by 31 March 2021.

The driving test online booking service reopened on Friday 21 August and then crashed due to the unexpected demand for places. By 8pm that evening the site had been visited seven million times.

In a recent announcement the Drivers and Vehicles Standards Agency (DVSA) said:

Coronavirus has severely impacted our business as usual operations, including by stopping driving tests in March. Since then DVSA have only been dealing with applications for emergency driving tests for critical workers.

Following unprecedented demand for the driving tests booking system with almost 7 million attempts to book a test when it opened, we need to carry out urgent maintenance so people can book tests.
We have to close the booking service.

Accordingly, until 8am on Wednesday 26 August 2020, the booking site will remain off-line. This essential maintenance should enable DVSA to cope with the increased demand from the public.

The services that will be unavailable during this period are:

• booking your driving tests
• changing your driving tests appointment
• checking your driving test appointment details
• cancelling your driving test

It is also worth underlining that the DVSA is only taking bookings for a six week period. On which basis it is unlikely that demand will reduce. Let’s hope that DVSA improvements in their online systems are effective.

The Home Office has announced tougher fines COVID measures targeting the most serious breaches of social distancing restrictions.

In most cases they will be effective from Friday 28 August 2020.

In their announcement issued 23 August, the Home Office said:

Those facilitating or organising illegal raves, unlicensed music events, or any other unlawful gathering of 30 people or more may face a £10,000 fine – placing a new deterrent on the breaches that put the public most at risk.

Fines of £100 can continue to be issued to those who participate in illegal gatherings and those who have already received a fine will see the amount of doubled on each offence, up to a maximum of £3,200.

But the Covid measures extend beyond large gatherings. There are also to be increases in fines for not wearing face masks when mandated to do so.

Also, from 28 August, fines for not wearing face coverings where it is mandated will also double for repeat offences, starting at £100 and doubling to a maximum of £3,200 for each repeat offence, mirroring fixed penalty notices for breaches for other restrictions.

It is mandatory to wear a face covering on public transport, and in many enclosed public spaces including shops, supermarkets and high street outlets unless you are exempt, including on the grounds of age, health or disability.

The second round of the Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) opened for applications open on Monday 17^th August. The second and final grant covers the quarter to 31 August 2020. The second grant will provide up to £6,570 for the quarter (£2,190 per month) paid in a single instalment. These figures are based on 70% of eligible earnings (previous quarter 80%). Claims for the first grant have now been closed.

The following are some of the most important eligibility criteria for the scheme:

• The applicant must have been adversely affected by coronavirus on or after 14 July 2020.
• Applicants must be self-employed or a member of a trading partnership, voluntary work, or duties as an armed forces reservist.
• Have filed a tax return for 2018-19.
• Have traded in 2019-20; be currently trading at the point of application (or would be except for COVID-19) and intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020-21,
• Have trading profits of less than £50,000 and more than half of total income from self-employment.
• Individuals can continue to work, start a new trade or take on other employment including voluntary work, or duties as an armed forces reservist.

It is possible for a qualifying self-employed person to qualify and claim for the second grant even if they had not claimed / qualified for the first grant.

If you are eligible, you should have been contacted by HMRC via letter, text or email and given a date on which to make your claim. Those who are eligible to use the scheme will have been given a randomly allocated date when they can apply for their grant. Whilst you cannot apply before the allocated day, there is no issue submitting a claim after that day. The applications open process will close on 19 October 2020. Claims are expected to be paid within six working days of submission of a claim.

Over 2.7 million benefited from the first stage of the SEISS – with the government handing out £7.8 billion of grants to help them through the crisis.

More than 3 million people are thought to be eligible for the second grant although some self-employed workers have fallen through the cracks such as the newly self-employed and some freelance workers who have been unable to claim. There are concerns for many self-employed workers when the scheme comes to an end, especially if we see a second wave of the pandemic.

The banks have released the fifth publication ranking the service quality league table of personal and business current account providers.

Personal and small business customers can clearly see how the quality of services compares across different dimensions in the survey, including service quality, online and mobile offerings, overdrafts, in-branch experience, and, for small business customers, the quality of their relationship or account management services. The CMA requires banks and buildings societies to display the survey results prominently online and in-branch so that customers can see whether they can get a better deal elsewhere.

The top three places for overall service quality providing personal accounts are:

1. Monzo
2. Starling Bank, and
3. First Direct

Customers with personal current accounts were asked how likely they would be to recommend their provider. Their provider’s online and mobile banking services, services in branches and overdraft services to friends and family. The results show the proportion of customers, among those who took part in the survey. Each provider who said they were extremely likely or very likely to recommend each service.

It is interesting that these smaller banks are ahead of the big four banks and other larger institutions in the UK.