Carlisle City Council have issued the following in respect of grants now available for businesses as originally announced by the Chancellor on 17 March:
Our staff are working hard to support our residents, businesses and local communities.
We have followed government guidance regarding the business grants and to ensure that all eligible businesses access the grants as quickly as possible, we are targeting our approach rather than asking businesses to apply. The government has made it clear that this is not an application process and that councils should be proactively contacting businesses that could access the funding. Within their guidance, updated and reissued today (Wednesday 1 April), they state that ‘Local Authorities will contact eligible businesses to arrange payment of the grants’.
We will be sending letters to around 3,275 businesses today (Wednesday 1 April) within the Carlisle area and will process the grants within five working days of receiving the necessary information. We expect to be awarding over £30million in grants through this process.
Within the letter we’ll be asking for some company details and for some businesses, their bank details. We need this information to process the payment and to ensure that the funding goes to the right place and that all eligible businesses get access to the grants, we don’t want any business to miss out.
We’ll be asking for the bank details from some businesses because they have cancelled their direct debit meaning that we will no longer have access to their details.
We’ll ask businesses to send the information to us electronically to speed up the process. This could be a scan or a photo using your phone of the completed form.
If any business is struggling to get to their business address to get hold of their mail, we’re asking them to please contact us by calling 01228 817234 or emailing NNDR@carlisle.gov.uk
Any eligible business that has any concerns or does not receive a letter by Monday 6 April, is asked to us contact us by calling 01228 817234 or emailing NNDR@carlisle.gov.uk
We will be sending nil balance bills to businesses that are eligible for business rate relief.
We are also promoting other grant and funding opportunities. We are also searching out other funding opportunities which we are also promoting to partners. Our website provides up-to-date information on the government funding and is regularly updated when new schemes or guidance is provided.
We are working closely with Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, Cumbria Tourism and Carlisle Ambassadors to support local businesses.
