UPDATE: Local Authority Discretionary Grants
The government has today announced further details on the Local Authority Discretionary Grants we reported on a few weeks ago.
As a reminder, the fund offers grants of £25,000, £10,000 or any amount up to £10,000 may be available to micro and small business who were not eligible for the Small Business Grant Fund or the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant Fund.
The difference between those funds and this one however is that awarding is discretionary, i.e. they are not guaranteed and rely on the local authority’s decision to provide funds to businesses they deem eligible or appropriate.
Each council will have a different method of undertaking this process – some are accepting applications (for example West Oxfordshire District Council currently have an application process that opens on 1 June and closes on 14 June: https://www.westoxon.gov.uk/business-and-licensing/coronavirus-business-and-licensing/) whereas others will potentially forego a similar process in favour of identifying potential awardees internally.
On this basis we recommend checking the website of your relevant authority for updates on their particular process as they will vary from authority to authority.
We would also note that, whilst demand for these grants will likely be extremely high, the amounts made available to local authorities in respect of these grants is hugely insignificant compared to that which was available for the Small Business and Leisure/Hospitality funds.
Therefore whilst it is clearly worth applying should you consider your business eligible, we’re keen to point out that at the current time we expect the likelihood of widespread approval to be low and therefore reliance should not be placed on successful application.
If you have any questions regarding this or anything else please get in touch, and for regular updates, announcements and news please check our website (www.dsaprospect.co.uk) and make sure you’re following our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dsa-prospect-ltd