Good News on Grants! Plus Additional Info

Apr 2, 2020 | Covid-19 News

Good news on Grants!

Late this afternoon we received notification from Warwick District Council that they have begun the process of distributing grant funds, which is sooner than expected. Some businesses may also have received notification directly. We are advised that this is a manual process and the team will make their way through the list of eligible businesses as quickly and securely as they can. I will continue to give updates on progress as needed. Details of eligibility are on our website and theirs.
For those that have not registered yet, don’t worry – here is the link: https://www.warwickdc.gov.uk/info/20827/coronavirus/1553/coronavirus_information_for_businesses/2

Grants – VAT and Corporation Tax

We sought advice from our accountants on the question of if grants are subject to VAT.
The answer we received is: “As we currently understand it, there will be no conditions attached to this grant and therefore it should be classed as outside of the scope of VAT. Based on this there would be no VAT to pay on the grant income. However, our current understanding (as of the 31 March) is that the grant will be classed as income in the accounts and therefore will be subject to corporation tax”.
If you are at all unsure about this, we would recommend you flag this with your accountants, or direct any other questions back to us and we will try to help. With many of these things, business specific advice is required.

Business Survey (Please complete)

We are working with a number of partner organisations to understand business concerns and lobby for additional support.
Below is a link to a survey that I would be very grateful if you could complete. The questions were formulated at a regional level and we have adapted them. Your answers will only be seen by Stephanie Kerr, Executive Director (BID Leamington), and then they will be anonymised. The outcome will help us to direct our support to you and the fully anonymised and collated data will be shared with regional and national policy makers, politicians and local authorities, so they can understand the challenges you may be facing. All personal data will be destroyed once it has been collated.

Love Leamington & Leam Delivers!

The www.loveleamington.com website is now live. We are constantly updating it so please let us know if you are not there and want to be. For now we are listing essential information on the homepage, but all town centre businesses who are trading online, via a website, facebook or other are listed within the site. We will be supporting this with social media promotion.
As well as #LoveLeam, we are also using #LeamDelivers. Please let us know if you would like our new Leam Delivers Logo to use on or within your own material if you are delivering from Leam!

Business Support

Over the last week we have been supporting our members on a number of business critical matters. To date we have arranged professional HR, Legal and Financial advice at no cost to the business, and are arranging support for those who need help with property negotiations. Please get in touch if any of these things are worrying you and we will try our best to help.
We will be providing you with a more detailed update in the next day or two. This will cover topics such as the job retention scheme (80% wage relief), the stop on evictions, business critical issues we are lobbying on, emerging guidance e.g. disposing of beer, BID activities that you can get involved in and ideas we are developing.

Other advice and support from previous emails / posts can be found on our website by clicking these links:

Alternatively, please join our Leamington Town Centre Facebook Group if you haven’t already. We will also post updates on the BID Leamington Facebook Page – and the Royal Leamington Spa Town Centre Facebook page is where we will showcase what you are now doing.

Please keep in touch and share your ideas with us, as we are stronger together!
#LoveLeam #LeamDelivers