Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced additional financial support for the hospitality and leisure industry; pledging an additional £1 billion for businesses negatively impacted.
Indeed, the Chancellor directly addressed the difficulties endured by the hospitality and leisure industry by acknowledging how negatively impacted these ventures were during the COVID-19 pandemic, extending to recent times with the emergence of the new variant, Omicron.
Indeed, Chancellor Sunak encapsulated this in his quote: “We recognise that the spread of the Omicron variant means businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors are facing huge uncertainty, at a crucial time.”
Included within the newly offered support scheme packages offered by the Government, will be various financial grants — some of which will be targeted to specific sectors with the industry.
To help across the board, the Treasury have reintroduced the Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme. This will enable medium-sized companies to claim compensation from the Government to assist with the cost of employee sick pay, which will provide financial relief if Coronavirus elevates sickness levels amongst staff.
The financial aid announced include the following:
- Businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors in England will be eligible for one-off grants of up to £6,000 per premises, plus more than £100 million discretionary funding will be made available for local authorities to support other firms.
- The Government will also cover the cost of Statutory Sick Pay for COVID-19 related absences for small and medium-sized employers across the UK.
- £30 million further funding will be made available through the Culture Recovery Fund, enabling more cultural organisations in England to apply for support during the Winter period.
It is thought that approximately 200,000 businesses will be eligible for business grants which will be administered by Local Authorities — these will be available in the coming weeks.
Sadly, the support has not been extended to the Travel Industry as a whole during what has been such a difficult time.
As always, WHA endeavour to provide updates as and when the grants become available.
If you should have any questions about what financial support is available to you — as an individual, partnership or business — please do get in contact with WHA… we are here to help.
