COVID Update 19

High street shops and other businesses under strain will be protected from aggressive rent collection.

The majority of landlords and tenants are working well together to reach agreements on debt obligations, however some landlords have been putting tenants under undue pressure by using aggressive debt recovery tactics.

To stop these practices, the government will temporarily ban the use of statutory demands and winding up orders where a company cannot pay their bills due to coronavirus. The measures will be included in the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill, which the Business Secretary Alok Sharma set out earlier this month.

Under these measures, any winding-up petition that claims that the company is unable to pay its debts must first be reviewed by the court to determine why. The Law will not permit petitions to be presented, or winding-up orders made, where the company’s inability to pay is the result of coronavirus.

The new legislation to protect tenants will be in force until June 30th and can be extended in line with the moratorium on commercial lease forfeiture.

The government is also laying secondary legislation to provide tenants with more breathing space to pay rent by preventing landlords rent.

The announcement in full can be read at the below link.

Protecting against aggressive rent collection

The guidance for local authorities setting out details of the Small Business Grants Fund and Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant Fund has been updated. In regard to whether grants are subject to tax:

Grant income received by a business is taxable, therefore the Small Business Grants, and Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants will be subject to tax.

Only businesses which make an overall profit once grant income is included will be subject to tax.

The guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-business-support-grant-funding

For full details on this £2,000 to £50,000 interest free (for the first 12 months) loan opportunity please go to the following link

Government-backed loan scheme

We have now compiled a list of both our BID member businesses/services and cafes/restaurants/pubs/takeaways that are still operating a level of service during the COVID-19 outbreak. For further details on each business please click on either links below.

Businesses/Services

Takeaways

If YOU are still offering a level of service but are not included on either list, please let us know asap by providing the below information:

• Business name
• Service available
• Current/revised opening times
• Contact telephone number/email address
• PDF Menu (If offering takeaway)

Whatever your concern, or even if you just want to chat or bounce an idea off us, please don’t hesitate to call me (Steve) on 01455 698494 at any time. Between Martina, Toni and myself we have been able to resolve many issues for our BID Members as well as plan for whenever a degree of normality returns. If the ‘unlocking’ of various business sectors currently starting in Europe shows no spike in contagion, then hopefully the UK will follow sooner rather than later and we need to be ready for that.

We are fortunate to have built over the past 6 years an e-newsletter circulation of 14,000 local people so we can get information out to them very quickly, as well as through our wide-reaching social media platforms.

Also, as the BID owns the state-of-the-art footfall monitoring equipment located throughout the BID area we can monitor how footfall is performing once we are all open for business once again, and if necessary take action to increase it through marketing and promotion.

In the meantime we are continuing to work closely with other Leicestershire Market Towns to share sources of information to the benefit of all.

Steve Wegerif (BID Director)
steve@hinckleybid.co.uk
07709 394841

Toni Scott
toni@hinckleybid.co.uk
07821 123026

Martina Smullen
martina@hinckleybid.co.uk
07496 839304

Best wishes, stay safe and well.
The Hinckley BID Team