Notes of Cairngorms Tourism Emergency Response Group Meeting

Sup­port for business

Coronavir­us: sup­port for High­land businesses

23 March 2020

High­land Coun­cil appre­ci­ate that this is a very dif­fi­cult time for your busi­ness and we are here to sup­port you as much as we can.

This webpage seeks to give a clear guide to the range of sup­port announced for busi­ness, their employ­ees and the self employed by the UK Gov­ern­ment, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and the Coun­cil. The advice from both gov­ern­ments is evolving and we will con­tin­ue to update this page as fur­ther inform­a­tion becomes available.

Wage Sup­port

Busi­ness will be able to secure a sub­sidy towards the salary costs of their employ­ees who oth­er­wise would have been laid off. Called the Coronavir­us Job Reten­tion Scheme employ­ers will be able to secure up to 80% of the cost of an employee’s cost up to a max­im­um of £2500 per month per employ­ee until end May 2020.

HMRC will deliv­er this wage sub­sidy. No detailed arrange­ments are yet avail­able on how to apply.

Loans

If your busi­ness needs short term cash flow sup­port a loan scheme is to be set up to sup­port primar­ily small and medi­um-sized busi­nesses to access bank lend­ing and over­drafts. Called the Coronavir­us Busi­ness Inter­rup­tion Loan Scheme, the scheme will provide lenders with a guar­an­tee of 80% of a loan and busi­nesses will be able to secure 12 months interest free repayments.

The Brit­ish Busi­ness Bank will deliv­er this loan scheme. You should talk to your bank or fin­ance pro­vider (not the Brit­ish Busi­ness Bank) as soon as pos­sible and dis­cuss your busi­ness plan with them. The scheme will be avail­able from the week com­men­cing 23 March 2020.

VAT

VAT pay­ments have been deferred for three months from 20 March until end June 2020 and no VAT pay­ments are needed dur­ing this peri­od. Tax­pay­ers will be giv­en until the 5 April 2021 to pay any VAT liab­il­it­ies that have accu­mu­lated dur­ing the defer­ral peri­od. VAT refunds and reclaims will be paid by the gov­ern­ment as normal.

This is an auto­mat­ic sup­port and busi­nesses do not need to apply.

Sick Pay

Small-and medi­um-sized busi­nesses and employ­ers will be able to reclaim Stat­utory Sick Pay (SSP) paid for sick­ness absence due to COV­ID-19. They will be able to reclaim 2 weeks’ SSP per eli­gible employ­ee. There will be no need to provide a Doc­tors Fit Note but employ­ers need to main­tain records of staff absences and pay­ments of SSP.

No detailed arrange­ments are yet avail­able on how the repay­ment mech­an­ism will work and how to apply.

Self Employed

The self employed income tax pay­ments due on the 31 July 2020 will be deferred without pen­alty or late pay­ment interest until the 31 Janu­ary 2021.

This is an auto­mat­ic sup­port and busi­nesses do not need to apply.

If you are self-employed or earn­ing below the Lower Earn­ings Lim­it of £118 per week — and you have COV­ID-19 or are advised to stay at home, you can make a claim for Uni­ver­sal Cred­it or new style Employ­ment and Sup­port Allow­ance. If you are eli­gible for new style Employ­ment and Sup­port Allow­ance, it will now be pay­able from day I of sick­ness, rather than day 8, if you have COV­ID-19 or are advised to stay at home.

If required you can access advance pay­ments upfront without need­ing to attend a job­centre, nor is there a need to attend a job­centre to demon­strate gain­ful self-employment.

Out­stand­ing Tax

If busi­nesses and indi­vidu­als who are in tem­por­ary fin­an­cial dis­tress as a res­ult of Cov­id-19 and have exist­ing out­stand­ing tax liab­il­it­ies, they are encour­aged to con­tact HMRC as they may be eli­gible to receive sup­port with their tax affairs through HMRC’s Time To Pay service.

Non Domest­ic Rates: Rates Relief

All non-domest­ic prop­er­ties in Scot­land will get a 1.6% rates relief. You do not need to apply for this relief and it will be applied to your bill.

Retail, hos­pit­al­ity and leis­ure busi­nesses will get 100% rates relief. To get this relief, a prop­erty has to be occupied.

If you’re strug­gling to pay your non-domest­ic rates bill you should con­tact the Council’s Non Domest­ic Rates team and ask them about your pay­ment options. Please note how­ever, there is no require­ment to make a pay­ment toward your busi­ness rates account until 30 Septem­ber 2020, this is without any pen­alty, interest or charge.

Grants

Retail, hos­pit­al­ity and leis­ure busi­nesses with a rate­able value between £18,001 and up to and includ­ing £51,000 will be able to apply for a one-off grant of £25,000 if oper­at­ing in that sec­tor as at 17 March 2020.

Busi­nesses oper­at­ing in an eli­gible premises that was in receipt of the Small Busi­ness Bonus Scheme and Rur­al Relief as at 17 March 2020, can apply for a one-off grant of £10,000. If you applied for Nurs­ery Relief or Dis­abled Relief but are eli­gible for the Small Busi­ness Bonus Scheme you can also get this grant.

Busi­nesses that may qual­i­fy for both awards may make request for only the £25,000 grant.

Please Note: NOT all types of retail, hos­pit­al­ity and leis­ure busi­nesses will qual­i­fy for these grants. Please refer to the Scot­tish Government’s web­site pages to estab­lish if your busi­ness is eli­gible or not.

The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has asked the Coun­cil to admin­is­ter these grants. At the cur­rent time the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Coun­cil and oth­ers to final­ise a com­mon approach to the applic­a­tion process.

Advice

The Council’s Busi­ness Gate­way ser­vice has set up a ded­ic­ated page at https://​www​.bgate​way​.com/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​s​/​c​o​r​o​n​a​v​i​r​u​s​-​s​u​pport This includes a range of guid­ance and inform­a­tion online about busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan­ning, and a num­ber of addi­tion­al related art­icles, includ­ing webinars and tutori­als to sup­port you at www​.bgate​way​.com

The Busi­ness Gate­way High­land team can be con­tac­ted on 01463 896791. Please Note: Τo man­age calls dur­ing the cur­rent COV­ID-19 emer­gency the team will oper­ate a call back service.

The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have set up a busi­ness sup­port helpline (0300 303 0660) for all busi­ness sup­port enquir­ies in Scot­land there is also fur­ther inform­a­tion avail­able on https://www.mygov.scot/non-domestic-rates-coronavirus/

The UK Gov­ern­ment has set out guid­ance for employ­ees, employ­ers and busi­nesses in provid­ing advice about COV­ID-19 on https://​www​.gov​.uk/​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​g​u​i​d​a​n​c​e​-​t​o​-​e​m​p​l​o​y​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​e​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​/​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​f​o​r​-​b​u​s​i​n​esses