COVID-19 Business Webinar Live - 03 Feb, 2021

and we'll welcome to you all this evening and thank you for joining us for this wiltshire covid19 business update my name is victoria maloney and i'm the head of south wheelchair economic recovery if you wish to see closed captions of our speaker's words then please click on the cc button on the bottom right of the screen and they should then appear after about 30 seconds the system sometimes takes a little while to warm up if you have any technical issues then these are usually solved by closing down the meeting link and then rejoining you are welcome to submit a question to be answered using the chat function we will try and provide written replies in the chat and our presenters will also answer verbally as many as they're able to get to we know that the business grants can be confusing so first tonight sam fox corporate director for placed environment will talk you through the grants that may be available to your business and how you can apply then our director of public health kate blackburn will provide you the latest local covert statistics some of the context behind them and an update on the community testing program we'll then answer as many of your questions that we can some have been sent in already and thanks to those of you that have done so and will respond to others ask tonight as well please note though that we cannot respond to questions specifically about your business or your application if you have questions of this nature please contact our grants team directly and we'll put the email address on the screen at the end of the presentation i'll now hand you over to sam fox thank you victoria and good evening everyone i'd like to start by talking about the grants and showing where we are in wheelchair by christmas we've paid over 100 million pounds in covered grant payments to over 10 000 wheelchair businesses more recently since the start of the third lockdown we've paid out 23 million pounds to over 3 000 businesses and around 2 300 of those have been the local restriction support grounds and more than 800 the additional restrictions grant i'll come on and explain those in a bit this has been a significant undertaking by our team of over 50 staff who've been working around the clock with many of them brought in from other areas of the council to help with the covered response and to support local businesses i'd like just to cast our minds back to the week before easter last year when the chancellor announced the the new funding regime and and brought us a new word that we previously weren't aware of even when playing scrabble and that was furlough we've ended up with complex procedures having to underpin our grants work so it wasn't just a case of us um putting the the money out straight away we've had to make sure that we undertake the right fraud checks that we've got the right state aid rules in place and they're being followed that we've got an auditable grant application process which we had to design from scratch and as part of that we also wanted to make sure that that you as businesses across wiltshire were given the right information and advice and we set up a seven day a week contact center to support that so back to today the additional restrictions grant is currently open for applications and i'll have more information on this grant later in the presentation the government have also extended the deadline for the christmas support payment for wet pubs until the 28th of february it was originally the 31st of january wet pubs are defined as those with less than 50 of sales on food we think we've contacted nearly all the pubs that are eligible for this grant in wheelchair but if your business derives less than fifty percent of sales from food and was one established before first of december 2020 then you could be eligible for this one-off payment of a thousand pounds so please do get in touch with the team by the email that we'll put on the screen at the end of the webinar finally for this slide we know how important this funding is for your business and we're still awaiting government payments for some schemes including the local restriction support grant for the period 16th the 30th of december so if you have applied and meet the criteria please be patient because as soon as we have this funding we'll process the payments i think it's also worth just mentioning now that the chancellor announced on the 2nd december that that grant period that was going to cover the period from the 16th of december now we normally get a little bit of lag from when a when the chancellor makes an announcement to when we get the detailed guidance from bayes the government department but also we sometimes get a lag from when we actually receive the money as a council and get the formal notification from government now the fact that that was announced on the 2nd of december by the chancellor and i'm now talking to you on the 3rd of february and we still haven't had the money is a real concern to us and it's something that we've raised with with the government department base in our meetings with them and with the local mps and that's now been taken up as treasury so hopefully we'll have an answer on this very quickly now we'll move on to explain some of the grants that you can apply for if you haven't done so already and i apologize for the fact that this is quite confusing the first type of grant to discuss is the local restriction support grant or lrsg this is available for businesses that pay rates or have a rate account and whose premises had to close as a result of national restrictions or local tier periods there are lots of different versions of the lrsg depending on which time period it covers for example there's one grant that covers the current time period while we're in national lockdown another from when we were in tier 2 from the second to the 30th of december and another for the time we were in tier 3 from the 31st of december to the 5th of january each of these different versions of the grant will pay out different amounts based on the rateable value of your business if you're unsure which grant is which or you need to know how much your grant may be we have a handy pdf guide on the business grants page of our website that explains all the individual grants and we'll post a link to this at the end of the presentation but while there are lots of different versions of the same grant the good news is that if you've applied for one we've made sure that you'll automatically receive funding for all the grants you're entitled to under the lrsg scheme so you only need to apply once but you do need to apply and these schemes are separate so the ones that ran between april and august last year don't apply to in this case so if you haven't applied since before november 2020 you will need to apply again examples of the businesses that can apply for the lrsg are non-essential retail pubs cafes restaurants and visitor attractions but this isn't an exhausted list so if your business pays rates or has a rate account and you had to close because of a covered risk restrictions please apply if you haven't already if you have applied and you're waiting payment please be assured that the team are processing up applications as quickly as they can at the moment we're dealing with about 100 new applications a day you can contact the team if you have any questions about your application and again we'll put the contact details on the screen at the end of the presentation please note that if you already have applied for for a local restriction support grant once you don't need to apply again and if you're eligible for other versions of the grant we will pay those automatically so hopefully that's covered the local restrictions grant we'll now move on to the additional restrictions grant which is also known as discretionary payments or arg these grants are for businesses that do not pay rates or that have not been closed by restrictions or that have not received any other covid grants so if you feel that your business needs funding due to covid and you've been impacted by it and you're not eligible for any other grants then you should apply for a a grant under the arg scheme as i've said previously we opened this grant back up for new applications only last week so if you've not applied for this grant before or if you've previously applied before november 2020 you can apply now if you have applied previously you don't need to reapply as if you're eligible you'll receive a further payment automatically and those payments should be going through for about 800 businesses in the coming days we're expecting to keep applications open until the 20th 12th of february unless it becomes oversubscribed and of course we may extend the window if the fund is undersubscribed so with this in mind i'd urge you to get your applications in as quickly as you can if you think you may be eligible grant payments range from fifteen hundred pounds to ten thousand depending on the number of employees your business has so it's funding that can really make a difference to your business it's also important to note that the eligibility criteria for the arg will be determined by the assessment of your application so if you are unsure about whether your business is eligible please make sure you apply and we will assess your application and make a decision so hopefully that's a rundown of the grants i'll now hand you over to kate for the public health update okay thank you sam and good evening everyone um so before i give you an update on our upcoming community testing program which i know many of you are interested in and what it may mean for businesses i'm just going to give you a brief overview of the current situation in wiltshire and just to reiterate these stats are for the wiltshire council local authority area they do not include swindon so i think if we move on just to the next slide it does continue to be an encouraging picture locally covered cases are still falling and we've now had 20 consecutive days of case numbers declining and i'd really like to thank all our residents and our businesses for their continued support in helping us to achieve this and so i'll talk through this this week's figures in a little more detail to give you some context around the population so as of 4 pm today in the last 7 days of reported data there's been 912 new cases of covert reported in wheelchair the current rate of cases per 100 000 population for wheelchair in the last seven days is now 161.6 and now that's below the national um rate of 269.1 at the moment and over the last couple of weeks we've seen those local authority areas which border our county also see a decline in their seven day rate to a similar position to wiltshire now whilst cases continue to be spread relatively evenly across wheelchair by geography they are not spread evenly across the age groups in our population so we currently see lowest rates of transmission in our children and young people aged nought to 14. and we have seen and still continue to see our highest rates of cases in the 20 to 29 year age group now that's been a consistent pattern and is related mainly to the employment within this age group often requiring those to still attend a workplace in person and that inevitably will increase the potential for viral transmission however even in this age group the rate has now dropped from a high that we saw in mid-january where the case rate was at 867 per 100 000 population and that's now down to 256.5 per 100

000 population so again it continues to be positive now throughout december and january we did also see rates increasing in our population age 60 and over and now of course this is the age group who are at higher risk of more severe illness from the virus and so we're pleased to have seen the rate here also drop to a current seven day rate of about 128 from a peak that we saw in mid-january and of course that peak in cases was putting significant pressure on our health and social care systems now in wheelchair there have been 528 registered deaths which included curbed 19 on the death certificate and that was up to the 15th of january and that sadly was an increase of 32 deaths on the previous week's figures that we'd seen so wiltshire's mortality rate is 105.6 per 100 000 population and that is lower than the england rate which is 156.6 and as always our thoughts and condolences go out to anyone and everyone who has suffered a loss due to covert um i just want to go back to our overall cases now so if i could pop onto the next slide please um it's really important to say that even though case numbers are on the decline as you can see in this graph we still have very high rates of infection if we think back to september october time if a local authority seven day case rate was at 20 per 100 000 that immediately necessitated action nationally and so that we could bring that rate down so you can see with a case rate still over 150 it's still very high and so infections could take off very quickly so everybody still needs to continue to stick to the rules and minimize leaving the house and having any contact with people as much as is possible so really just to emphasize to ensure your businesses and your employees are really continuing to follow social distancing guidelines at all times a number of the outbreaks that we've been involved in supporting the social distancing within the business area has been absolutely superb and then it's been on on breaks outside where people just by human nature have forgotten how important it is to stay two meters apart so really important just to make sure employees are continued following social distancing um people washing their hands more often than usual and wearing a face covering where it's appropriate to do so and we really don't want to see any of the progress we've made be a bit you know be undone now and through any complacency one in three people that have covered 19 don't display any symptoms um so we're asking people to act as if you have the virus and do everything you can to stop it from spreading now i'm sure some of you will be aware that we've worked with a number of businesses around guidance to be covered secure through the public health and public protection teams and have also supported a number of settings uh through outbreaks and positive cases associated with their businesses uh to help in containing that viral spread and we've also written out recently again to a number of businesses with guidance and support and and we've got signs and floor markings available which we're very happy to share with you to ensure that everyone is abiding by the guidance still and if you'd like more information on this you can contact our wonderful communications team and we'll make sure that the email is circulated and available to you all so we do know how difficult this all continues to be and the vast majority of wheelchair employers are following the guidance and that's really shown in the falling case numbers and that's happened so thank you so much for everything that you're doing um and and all of you are continuing to do to keep each other and your employees safe um so i did just want to touch on community testing um before i finish now some of you may know this as asymptomatic testing or lateral flow testing or rapid testing and but it's essentially the testing that's done using a swab that gives you a result within 20 to 30 minutes and the accuracy is not as good as the pcr testing which is the one that is more commonly used and so we have to apply these tests where they make the most sense in protecting the vulnerable so currently in wiltshire as with all of our local authority colleagues in the southwest we're in the planning stages of introducing the government's um asymptomatic rapid community testing we'll be doing that locally and that's really aimed at targeted populations who are unable to work from home now i am treating rapid testing very cautiously this is not a test to release and a negative test does not mean that you don't have the virus this is a program of testing to identify so that actually people who do have the virus can be removed from settings and so if it's used alongside other methods of infection prevention and control it can be a useful tool and help reduce the spread of the virus however i would like to reiterate that a negative test is not a passport to freedom and people still need to take all the measures and precautions very seriously um which we mentioned before such as social distancing washing hands and wearing face coverings now one of the groups this is specifically being aimed at is people who work within small businesses those in larger businesses are being supported by other testing programs and these are being set up nationally now originally um this was for companies with more than 250 employees that the national program would support but actually that's been expanded literally in the last few days to include companies with more than 50 5-0 employees and it's because of this changing national picture that we're having to factor that into our local planning so that we're really maximizing this alongside all of the other virus outbreak control measures that we're running um so given the time scales it is a challenging logistical task but we're working really hard and we've identified four locations where we anticipate our temporary sites will be i had hoped to share that with you this evening however we are awaiting uh government to sign off our plans so unfortunately we're not quite in a position to confirm where they will be as yet as things could still change but please sign up to our business newsletter for the latest updates and please also be assured that we will keep you as updated as possible throughout all of this one of the other tools just to mention at our disposal in terms of containing the virus is test and trace and i'm really pleased to say that across wiltshire 96 of coba cases are being successfully contact traced either by the national nhs chest and trace service or our local tracing partnership that my public health team run and so our team reach out to people by calling emailing and we'll soon be conducting doorstep visits to people to ensure that every case has the opportunity to complete their contact racing with one of our trained and may i say also very friendly staff for our local service our team has been managing to reach around half of the cases we try to follow up and that stayed consistent even when overall cases increase considerably and when we think that these are cases who generally don't have the correct contact details who haven't responded to the national scheme um it's really helped to boost the number of people that we're contacting now feedback on the local scheme does continue to be positive and our core handlers are able to signpost individuals to a number of sources of support to enable them to self-isolate um so if we could ask you to highlight and save um 0300 456 100 into your phones so that if you do need to be contacted by a friendly team for any reason you know who it is that's trying to reach you and so i'll finish there thank you ever so much and i'll hand back over to victoria for the q a part of the evening thanks kate thank you to all of you who submitted questions beforehand we're going to answer some of these now along with the questions you've submitted this evening and please remember if you do have any further questions type them in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them the first question we received beforehand is actually from several people which is that i have a business rates account but i don't pay rates which grant do i apply for and i'm going to answer that one for the local restriction support grant you just need to have a current business rate account we are aware that small businesses may not actually pay rates but as long as you have a rate account you are entitled to a grant if you meet the other eligibility criteria you do not need to have a rate account for the additional restrictions grant the next question comes from claire fall who says i run a holiday let and we have had to cancel a lot of bookings we're not registered as a business and we don't pay business rates on the property can i apply for a discretionary grant and i'm going to ask sam to answer that one yes thank you for your question claire we're aware that not all businesses will pay business rates to hit particularly holiday let's who may pay councils tax instead so you do not need to pay business rates to apply for the additional restrictions grant as before though if you have a business rates account but aren't required to pay business rates you may be eligible for the local restriction support grant and regarding business registration this is something that our assessment team will look at and in the grant you need to have been actively trading prior to the lockdowns being introduced so we'd welcome your application if you feel you should make one clear thanks sam the next question comes from clive chamberlain clive says i've been unable to claim any benefits since the start of the pandemic i pay myself as the proprietor of the business on an ad hoc basis and not through paye we are a fully registered plc can i apply for a grant so thanks for your question clive if your business has a property that is eligible for the local restriction support grant you can receive a grant regardless of your payment mechanism so your constitution of your business doesn't affect your eligibility for that grant under the additional restrictions grant we are happy to accept applications from people who are paid by dividends or by other means we do ask for a copy of your latest tax return so that we can evidence you've been trading if you are unable to provide a tax return because you're a start-up business our team will be in touch to consider your individual circumstances the next question is from nicola holman and i think we've already answered this question but just to go through it again nichola asks please could you explain the difference between the lrsg and the arg do i need to apply for the six thousand pound grant for businesses from fifth of january 21 separately or will it be paid automatically and i'm going to ask sam to answer that one i've already answered questions just to reiterate the local restrictions for business that have a business account who are required correct business to look at the gov dot uk closure list before applying post that link at the end of this presentation a thousand pep grant yes so can people hear me i just have a message that i've i've got i think you've cut out their sounds so i'll just quickly reiterate um so this is what's the difference between the lrsg and arg and do we need to apply separately for the six thousand pound one-off grant from the fifth of january so to reiterate the local restrictions grant is for businesses that have a rate account required to close under covered 19 regulation such as shops restaurants hairdressers and pubs we do recommend that businesses look at the gov dot uk closure list before applying and that we'll post that post that link at the end of the presentation the additional restrictions grant is available for businesses not covered by the local restrictions grant that operate in wheelchair the six thousand pound grant which actually varies in amount and is a one-off payment announced by the chancellor on the 5th of january is only available for businesses who are eligible for lrsg if you have already applied and been successful this will be paid automatically the next question comes from lily jade gunning who says if we have already applied the additional restrictions grant in november when will we know about future payments we are paying a further award of arg funding to businesses who are successful in the november december application window so they do not need to apply again this funding is currently in the process of being paid and we expect to notify you early next week about a further award the next question we have received is anonymous it says i applied for a small business grant in june last year do i need to apply for one of these grants and i think we've had a similar question in the faq to say whether you if you've applied for discretionary grant in mid-summer if you need to apply for the arg so you will need to complete an application form the lrsg and the arg have different criteria and conditions compared to the small business grants the retail hospitality and leisure grants and the discretionary grants last year the window for these grants opened in november so if you've not applied since the opening date in november you will need to submit a new application please only apply once for either the lrsg or arg and as we've detailed all further funding awards will be made against your initial claim the next question is from chris patrick who says please can you explain the grants that may be available to village halls and similar organizations so we village halls are eligible for the local restriction support grant as long as the applicant is the rate payer and as long as the main service of that village hall has had to close due to restrictions in general terms we do expect that village halls will be closed and therefore be eligible there are some types of uses that are allowed to continue but i would encourage you to apply so your case can be considered katarina johnson asks i didn't realize that the first arg grant in november was available for businesses that weren't forced to close for example businesses that have continued to trade online so not officially closed as businesses i've applied for the grant this time around would i be able to apply for the first arg grant as some grants have been opened or backdated thanks for your question katarina at this time we are not backdating arg applications to the november lockdown the additional restrictions grant is a finite fund and we're keen to help as many businesses as possible so after this application window and after every application window and as we get more data about the levels of demand and the numbers of businesses in need of support we may make further rewards going forward we've got another question which if a business started after the first lockdown march 2020 is it eligible for grants in the second and third lockdown so to be eligible for the local restriction support grant or the arg grant you needed to have been trading the day before restrictions came into force grants are available but they are dependent on the day you started trading so for the november lockdown if you are eligible on the if you are trading on the 5th of november you are eligible for that payment and going forward into future tiers if you are trading on the day before restrictions came into force you are eligible for that grant payment we've got another question from paul with regards to the arg grants are their payments for the period between the end of second lockdown while we were in tier two and three as our business could not operate if so what might they be so as we went over with katarina the arg payment is not related to the tier restrictions period as sam mentioned earlier it's got a much longer running span it runs to the end of march 22 and so the arg windows are as they open and close and as we get more evidence about that level of demand and the level of awards that we're able to make we may make further awards in future and then another question is is this webinar recorded and how will we find the link for those that miss the webinar to catch up and it will be on youtube and it will also be in our business newsletter thank you for all your questions i think that's all we've got time for this evening but before we go i just want to highlight some of the places that you can find out more information about the grants the first is the business grants page on our website which has all the grants information the two online forms through which you can apply and a sign up link to our weekly e-newsletter i really recommend that you sign up to our e-newsletter for the latest updates it's how we will let you know about any application windows any further funding windows and any information from government you can also find out if your business is eligible for a grant on the government website don't worry if that website address is too long there is a link to it on our grants page so if you go onto our grants page you can go through a little questionnaire that says whether or not you might be eligible and finally you can contact us via this email address which is covid-19 business support at wheelchair.gov.uk please do check online first to see if your question can be answered there because we are dealing with a very high volume of emails that brings our webinar to a close thank you very much for joining us and we hope you found it useful have a lovely evening you

2021-02-12 04:07

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