The PSA has detailed the guidance on the restart grant and the new £425m ARG grant.
Restart Grants
The restart grants are available to non-essential retail businesses and businesses in the hospitality, accommodation, leisure, personal care and gym sectors. The rates that apply for the hospitality, accommodation and leisure businesses are:
£8,000 for businesses with a rateable value of exactly £15,000
£12,000 for businesses with a rateable vale over £15,000
£18,000 for businesses with a rateable value of exactly £51,000
There is a full list of the types of business that are eligible for the grants in Annex C of the guidance but the general definitions are:
Hospitality – a business whose main function is to provide a venue for the consumption and sale of food and drink
Leisure – a business that provides opportunities, experiences and facilities, in particular for culture, recreation, entertainment, celebratory events, days and nights out, betting and gaming
Accommodation – a business whose main lodging provision is used for holiday, travel and other purposes.
Gym & Sport – a commercial establishment where physical exercise or training is conducted on an individual basis or group basis, using exercise equipment or open floor space with or without instruction, or where individual and group sporting, athletic and physical activities are participated in competitively or recreationally.
Of particular disappointment is that there is a specific paragraph that states that the definition of a leisure business excludes coach tour operators and tour operators.
ARG Guidance
The ARG guidance has been updated to include the additional £425m announced in the Budget. This funding it to be allocated from 1 April 2021. While the conditions for the new ARG round are essentially the same as previously, it is worth noting that previous guidance for the Additional Restrictions Grant indicated that businesses must have been trading before relevant restrictions were introduced in order to be eligible. This is no longer the case. All businesses that are trading and meet other eligibility criteria may apply to receive funding under this scheme. There is no starting date from which businesses must have been trading in order to qualify for grant funding.
It is also worth noting that Local Authorities have until 30 June 2021 to prove that they have spent or made a validated attempt to spend 100% of their first two ARG allocations. This is to speed up the allocation of the existing £1.6bn in ARG funding as only around 12% of this was spend when the last figures were published.