Councillor Tudor Evans, Leader of Plymouth City Council and portfolio holder for Economic Development, has today shared an update on the support that the Council has delivered to businesses this week, and the focus for the coming week.
Business Support
We’ve been working hard to make sure businesses in Plymouth are aware of the support available to them through our Invest Plymouth COVID-19 business support pages and regular newsletters. We’re also regularly talking to business groups and organisations like the Chamber of Commerce, FSB and the Growth Board to understand the key issues that are impacting businesses and how we as the Council can lobby to close the gaps in support measures.
Yesterday we published an infographic to help further explain the business support available, which you can see here.
We welcome the news announced by the Treasury last night that the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) has been updated, no longer requiring personal guarantees for businesses looking to borrow less than £250,000 and expanding to support large businesses through the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS). The CLBILS provides a government guarantee of 80% to enable banks to make loans of up to £25 million to firms with an annual turnover of between £45 million and £500 million.
Business Intelligence
Our Economic Development team has been working to gather business intelligence that informs our conversations direct with government to support Plymouth’s key asks. We’ve been speaking to a number of businesses and have created an evidence base which provides a rich and fact based evidence of gaps in support for our businesses. We’re already in conversation with government about these asks and will continue to lobby hard for support.
Business Grants
Since writing to eligible businesses to announce how they can access the Small Business Grant Fund and Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Grant Fund last week we’ve already paid over £18 million direct into business bank accounts. We’ve received 2,282 grant forms so far out of a total 4,000 expected, have approved 1,650 of these and have a team working as quickly as possible to make sure all eligible businesses are aware of, and able to, claim their grants.
We also held a conference call Q&A session with our tenants at City Business Park this week who currently are not able to access these business grants to provide them with support and advice. This Q&A was a huge success and I’d like to thank the FSB, Ashfords and Devon Chamber of Commerce for joining us as part of our expert panel to provide advice and guidance to our tenants. We’ve had some fantastic feedback and are now looking into how we can roll this out for our other sites.
Rate Relief
Plymouth City Council has granted all rate paying businesses a two month rate deferral, this is an automatic offer and available to all businesses who pay rates.
On top of this, the Government has granted a business rates holiday for all retail, leisure and hospitality businesses for the 2020-21 tax year. All nurseries in England will also receive this business rates holiday.
Fishing Industry Support
There are lots of unsung heroes right now, and the fishing industry is one of them. European and restaurants sales have collapsed due to coronavirus. So we are supporting Call4Fish.com, an initiative run by the industry delivering fish direct from the quay to the community, allowing people to stay home and protect the NHS. In the first week over 220,000 people have looked at the social media and over 1,500 people have ordered fresh fish deliveries. This great thinking from Plymouth is sweeping the country and now 10 other fishing ports have come aboard and people across the UK are starting to enjoy fresh British fish.
Our support for the fishing industry doesn’t stop there as we’re continuing to focus support on fishing and food security within our lobbying activities and direct grant support for the fishing industry.
Looking ahead to next week
Lobbying
Over the next week our focus will be to continue our lobbying efforts to provide much needed support for those businesses not currently covered by the Government’s announced measures. We’re working with the Local Government Authority and combining our lobbying efforts with other South West councils to put pressure on government for more support for our region’s economy.
Our lobbying is focused on four areas:
- Support for the self-employed: The current self-employed scheme still means people are struggling as money won't come until June
- Business Grants and Rate Relief: The current rate relief measures do not include premises that pay combined rent and rates so they can't apply for business grants or receive rate relief support. Over 400 businesses in Plymouth are currently impacted by this.
- Support for single employee limited companies: Over 2,000 companies in Plymouth fall within this bracket. Next week we’ll be lobbying for support for these companies whose directors take most of their income through shared dividends and so are not eligible for current support measures that have been announced.
- Support for the fishing industry: With a specific focus on food security