Just over half of councils in England have began making funds to COVID-hit companies from a £1.5bn help package deal – nearly 18 months after it was launched.
Businesses within the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors got a enterprise charges vacation because of the pandemic, however these outdoors these sectors had been advised they may not enchantment their funds for enterprise charges.
In March final 12 months, as a substitute, a £1.5bn enterprise charges aid fund was introduced to assist them, with native councils given the duty of allocating the cash.
A Freedom of Information request by property consultancy Gerald Eve was despatched to 309 councils, with 207 responding.
It discovered that barely over half – 119 councils – stated that they had began making funds to companies underneath the scheme.
Those councils account for £632m of the £1.5bn package deal, however they’ve collectively paid out simply £329m.
Gerald Eve stated that if this pattern was extrapolated throughout England’s remaining councils, a most of £820m from the entire £1.5bn out there would have been paid out.
Jerry Schurder, enterprise charges coverage lead at Gerald Eve, stated: “This fund was supposed to help businesses negatively impacted by the pandemic, but which were denied other business rates support.
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“The authorities claimed Carf (the COVID-19 Additional Relief Fund) was the quickest and fairest approach of getting help to companies that want it essentially the most, however the previous 17 months has proven this to be full hyperbole.
“In fact, the opposite is true.
“Sadly, it is a case of too little, too late for the a whole lot of 1000’s of companies that had been retrospectively denied their rights to enchantment their charges payments however have but to obtain a penny from the native authorities.”
A government spokesperson said: “The authorities has offered an unprecedented package deal of help for companies, together with a complete of £26bn in grants to these affected by restrictions put in place to deal with COVID-19.
“Councils are responsible for allocating funding and targeting it to businesses, based on local circumstances.”
Source: information.sky.com”