Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that small businesses that have rateable values above the cap for the Small Business Grant Fund have fair access to covid-19 related grant funding.

The Small Business Grant Fund is targeted support for small and rural businesses that have potentially been hit hardest by the measures taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The scheme has been tied to the existing business rates system to enable Local Authorities to make payments as quickly as possible. Businesses that are eligible for Small Business Rates Relief or Rural Rates Relief are eligible for support under the Small Business Grants Fund.

We continue to look at the issues of businesses that aren’t in-scope of the existing grants schemes and how best to provide support. Where business operate from premises with a rateable value in excess of £15,000, other schemes including the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant or the recently announced Bounce Back Loan scheme might be more appropriate.

On the 1 May 2020 the Business Secretary announced that a further up to £617 million is being made available to local authorities as a discretionary fund so that they can address cases that are out-of-scope from the Small Business Grants Fund and Retail Hospitality and Leisure Grants Fund and this could allow local authorities to make grants to businesses above the rateable value cap of £15,000 subject to them meeting the eligibility criteria of the discretionary fund.