Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to ensure local authorities are able to effectively pay coronavirus support grants to hospitality businesses under existing schemes.

Hospitality businesses are currently required to close due to the legal restrictions that have been put in place to tackle Covid-19 and save lives. Closed businesses will be eligible for grants of up to £4,500 per 6-week period of closure plus an additional one-off payment of up to £9,000 via local authorities.

In addition to these mandatory grants for closed businesses, £1.6bn has been allocated to local authorities in discretionary funding allowing them to provide grants to businesses that are not required to close but which are severely impacted.

There has been close engagement with the local government sector throughout the design and implementation of grant support for businesses during the local and national Covid-19 restrictions.

Full guidance to local authorities has been published in respect of all grant schemes, as have several iterations of FAQs picking up on issues raised by local authorities.

The Government is committed to meeting the additional New Burdens costs to local authorities. Financial support has started to be provided through some of the grant schemes. A further New Burdens assessment is currently underway and we will provide the additional funding to local authorities at the earliest opportunity.