Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will ensure that local authorities are provided with sufficient funding to provide grants to all charities in receipt of charitable rate relief.

The Government is aware that some small businesses and organisations have found themselves excluded from the existing business grants schemes because of the way they interact with the business rates system. That is why the Government has allocated up to an additional £617 million to Local Authorities to enable them to give discretionary grants to organisations in this situation. The Government’s intention is for Local Authorities to prioritise the following types of organisation when making discretionary grants:

• Small businesses in shared offices or other flexible workspaces for example, industrial parks, science parks, incubators etc, which do not have their own business rates assessment;
• Regular market traders who do not have their own business rates assessment;
• B&Bs which pay Council Tax instead of business rates; and
• Charity properties in receipt of charitable business rates relief which would otherwise have been eligible for Small Business Rates Relief or Rural Rate Relief

Local Authorities may choose to focus payments on those priority groups which are most relevant to their local areas. Local Authorities may also choose to pay grants to organisations outside of these priority groups, according to local economic need, so long as the organisation was trading on 11^th March, and has not received any other cash grant funded by central Government (with the exception of grants from the SEISS).

In addition, the Government has announced a £750m support package for charities. £360m of this will be allocated directly to charities providing essential services and supporting vulnerable people, including up to £200m for hospices across the next quarter. A further £310m will support smaller, local charities, including through grants distributed by the National Lottery Community Fund. £60m will be allocated to the Devolved Administrations through the Barnett formula. The Government pledged to match whatever the public donated to the BBC Big Night In fundraiser on 23 April, with a minimum of £20m going to the National Emergencies Trust.