Over the last few hours two of the Sussex District Councils published information for support for their local businesses. The first was from Malcolm Johnston who is the CEO for Rother District and he was on LinkedIn last night and stated “Help for local businesses from Rother District Council. If you’re within the Rother area please have a look at this and share the information with others.” The link he sent out was here and the information is located below. A couple of hours later Kevin Stewart who is the Business Unit Leader from the Mid Sussex District published this piece which includes the link to their website

After a break from COVID business grants at my Local Authority for nearly 6 months they are back with announcements today by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Please see https://lnkd.in/eif2FR_S. Do bear with me at Mid Sussex DC and my local government colleagues though as we have yet to receive the guidance despite the announcement. As soon as we get the guidance my amazing team and I will do our utmost at Mid Sussex DC as will my colleagues across Local Government to get the grants to eligible businesses as quickly as we can using whatever communication method we can. Please take care everyone and be safe.

I suspect that many other Councils will be offering a similar provision and so Micro and Small Businesses along of course with the Medium and Large Businesses will be able to consider this as they are facing many challenges as a consequence of COVID. I have encouraged the Councils to use Chamber of Commerce’s to communicate it and of course I am doing the same on todays blog. It would be fantastic if local MPs would also raise this on their websites. Here is the text from the Rother website.

Discretionary Business Grants – Making a difference

Rother District Council has secured additional funding from Government of approximately £700,000 to continue to support businesses through the impact of COVID – 19.

Whilst some of this money will be used to meet the final grants from previous discretionary schemes, the Council has approved a new discretionary grant scheme, designed to have a longer legacy for local businesses and the Rother economy.

The scheme has been designed to provide support to businesses within five distinct areas:

1. Businesses closed due COVID 19 isolation
2. Rural Businesses
3. Empty Shops
4. Empty Businesses rated property
5. Staff Training and Development

Further details on the scheme can be found here.