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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what financial support is available to businesses which operate childcare activity groups in rented spaces and who have lost income as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.

The Government put forward a package of support to help businesses with their ongoing business costs in recognition of the disruption caused by Covid-19. This included the?Small Business Grants Fund (SBGF) and the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants Fund (RHLGF).?This funding was provided to support the smallest businesses and small businesses in some of the sectors?hardest hit by the measures taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

In addition, on?1 May,?the Government announced the Local Authority Discretionary Grants Fund. This scheme was intended to support small businesses?in some of the hardest hit sectors?that were previously outside the scope of the Small Business and Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Grant Funds.

We asked local authorities to prioritise the following types of businesses for grants from within this funding pot:

• Small businesses in shared offices or other flexible workspaces. Examples could include units in industrial parks, science parks, and incubators which do not have their own business rates assessment.
• Regular market traders with fixed building costs, such as rent, who do not have their own business rates assessment.
• Bed & breakfasts which pay Council Tax instead of business rates.
• Charity properties in receipt of Charitable Rate Relief, which would otherwise have been eligible for Small Business Rates Relief or Rural Rate Relief.

Local authorities have been responsible for defining the precise eligibility for this Fund?and?may choose to make payments to other businesses based on local economic need,?subject to those businesses meeting the specific eligibility criteria.

Guidance for Local Authorities was published 13 May: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-business-support-grant-funding.

Businesses which were not eligible for or have not received grant funding should be able to benefit from other measures in the Government’s unprecedented package of support for business:?https://www.gov.uk/business-coronavirus-support-finder