Covid-19 grants linked to business rate properties in Wales

Welsh Government has made funds available for non-repayable grants for small businesses; these are being distributed by the Council for qualifying businesses situated within the Caerphilly county borough that are occupying business rate premises as at the 20th March 2020.

Important: Ratepayers can apply for these grants directly; please do not employ a rating agent to apply on your behalf.

There are two levels of grant available, both of which are based on the rateable value of the property occupied.

• Grant 1: A grant of £25,000 is available for retail, leisure or hospitality businesses occupying properties with a rateable value of between £12,001 and £51,000. This means businesses occupying properties such as shops, restaurants, cafés, drinking establishments, cinemas, live music venues, hotels, guest and boarding premises and self-catering accommodation.   

• Grant 2: A grant of £10,000 is available to all businesses eligible for small business rate relief (SBRR) with a rateable value of £12,000 or less. 

Please note that the multiple property restriction which applies to the SBRR Scheme also applies to this grant. Therefore, the same ratepayer may only receive the grant for a maximum of two properties in each local authority area.

The Welsh Government has announced that charities, community amateur sports clubs and not-for-profit bodies occupying premises with a rateable value of £12,000 or below, and operating within the retail, leisure and hospitality sector will be eligible for a £10,000 business support grant to help them respond to the financial challenges of Covid-19.

This new package will include support for:

• charity run shops
• sports premises
• community centres

A £10,000 grant is available to all ratepayers eligible for charitable relief and Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) relief, operating in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors occupying properties with a rateable value of £12,000 or less. Local authorities have discretion to provide grants to not-for-profit bodies they consider to be operating for charitable purposes but aren’t currently receiving charitable relief or CASC relief. This discretion will only apply to not-for-profit organisations who are in receipt of, or have entitlement to, discretionary rate relief and operate in the retail, leisure or hospitality sectors.

The multiple property restriction applied to the Small Business Rates Relief scheme applies to this grant. Therefore the same ratepayer may only receive the grant for a maximum of two properties in each local authority. This multiple property restriction also applies to charities, CASCs and not-for-profit bodies.

Applications should be made via the link below on or before 30 June 2020.

Important Information: You cannot apply for this grant if you have already been awarded Covid-19 grant(s) amounting to £10k or more from any of the following:

• Welsh Government Economic Resilience Fund (ERF)
• Sport Wales Emergency Relief Fund

If you have any queries regarding eligibility based on any Covid-19 related grants that you may already have received, e.g. if you have received a Covid-19 grant(s) amounting to less than £10k from Sport Wales and/or the ERF, please e-mail nndr@caerphilly.gov.uk with details inserting the words ‘Covid-19 Grant Query’ in the subject line, before submitting an application form.

Already applied for Covid-19 grant(s) linked to business rate properties?

If you have already applied for a £10,000 grant and you:

• are a ratepayer eligible for charitable relief, Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) relief, or a not-for-profit organisation which is in receipt of, or has entitlement to, discretionary rate relief; and
• you operate in the retail, leisure or hospitality sectors;

we will email you the following declaration statement which says:

‘I have not received a separate Covid-19 related grant either from the Welsh Government’s Economic Resilience Fund or the Sport Wales Emergency Relief Fund.  In making this declaration, I understand that by giving false or inaccurate information, the local authority, Welsh Government and/or Sport Wales will begin proceedings to reclaim any grant incorrectly claimed.’  

We will ask you to reply to our email and confirm that your organisation has either:

• not received separate Covid-19 grant(s) ;or
• has received other Covid-19 grant(s) and give us details of the type of Covid-19 grant(s) your organisation has received, and how much grant funding was received.

We will need to review your application before we email you about the above declaration. We will do this as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience.  

How to apply

The Welsh Government closed the scheme for Covid-19 grants linked to business rate properties in Wales at 5pm on 30 June 2020. The council cannot consider any new claims now.

Contacting the council

As I’m sure you can appreciate, we are dealing with an unprecedented volume of calls to our contact centre and emails to the NNDR (Business Rates) Team; many of these relate to enquiries about the grants related to business rate properties.

We are working hard to get these payments out to the business community as quickly as possible.  If you have already submitted your grant claim, this will have been logged.  We are now making payments daily and processing claims as quickly as we can. We politely ask that you do not call us to request an update as this will only increase any delay in making the grant payments.  If we need to clarify any details about your claim, we will contact you. 

For further information on funding and support as a result of COVID-19 please visit the Business Wales website.

Guidance to welsh local authorities issued by Welsh Government

Covid-19 grants - state aid notification

Grants provided via the Covid-19 Non-Domestic Rates schemes will be provided to businesses under the de minimis Regulation (1407/2013).  The de minimis Regulation allows businesses to receive up to €200,000 of de minimis state aid in a three-year period; this consists of the current financial year and the two previous financial years. 

To administer de minimis state aid, local authorities will need to establish that the award of a grant will not result in a business having received more than €200,000 of de minimis aid.  Please note that the threshold only relates to aid provided under the de minimis Regulations.  Aid under other exemptions or outside the scope of State Aid is not relevant to the de minimis aid calculation. 

What local authorities need to do

All local authorities in Wales are required to provide a declaration to the grant  applicant and ask the question (see below) of any business applying for, or having already been paid, a grant.  Please note the State Aid guidance was issued retrospectively by the Welsh Government several weeks after the grant scheme was launched. This means that some businesses will have received the declaration and answered the question as part of the initial process, whereas others will be contacted separately regarding this de minimis State Aid issue.

The details of the declaration and the state aid question are shown below for your information:  

Declaration

This grant is being provided to you as de minimis aid under EC Regulation 1407/2013. You can find out more about what this is here:  ‘de minimis aid summary’.  A grant provided to you under this scheme will be relevant if you have applied, or are planning to apply, for support in the future under de minimis.

The value of the support you are receiving under this scheme will be either £10,000 or £25,000 depending on which grant you qualify for.

You will need to declare this amount to any other support agencies that ask you how much de minimis aid you have had.  For the purposes of the de minimis Regulation, you must keep a record of this grant for 3 years from the date you receive it.

Question: 

Has your business received any public sector assistance through a State Aid de minimis scheme over the past 3 years? Yes/No 

If your answer is ‘no’, you do not need to do anything else regarding this question.

If your answer is ‘yes’, you will be asked to provide these details:

• Name of the organisation providing the assistance/aid
• The value of the assistance
• The date of the assistance 

Further State Aid Information

In a minority of cases, businesses may notify local authorities that they have gone over the €200,000 limit of de minimis.  If this is the case, then local authorities can still provide the business with a Covid-19 NDR grant, notifying this under the Covid-19 Temporary Framework Notification. This requires local authorities to collect more information from such businesses.  The Welsh Government has advised us that the details on how this will work will be available soon.

Covid-19 – Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Rate Relief

Welsh Government has announced a package of support for businesses to help during the coronavirus outbreak. Welsh Government has issued details of an enhanced rate relief scheme under which retail, leisure and hospitality properties will benefit from the additional business rate relief to be provided. For more details, please read the Welsh Government’s Guidance on Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Rates Relief in Wales 2020-21.

Amended bills for the financial year 2020/21 are being issued by the Council’s Business Rate Team to qualifying ratepayers occupying properties in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors.  In some circumstances, we may need to contact you for further information to help us decide if your property is eligible for this rate relief. In the meantime, if your premises is used for retail, leisure and hospitality purposes, you should not make any payments in respect of the financial year starting on 1st April 2020.       

If you have any queries, please email the Business Rates Team at nndr@caerphilly.gov.uk.

Due to the current situation, we would ask all ratepayers to correspond via email because there may be a period when we are unable to answer telephone calls or receive written correspondence.

Important: Ratepayers should contact us directly regarding the above rate relief; you do not need to employ a rating agent to act on your behalf.

For further information on funding and support as a result of COVID-19 please visit the Business Wales website.