You may be eligible for a Discretionary Restart Grant (Round 2) if you have not already benefitted from a Discretionary Restart Grant (Round 1) and: 

You own/run an unrated business that had to close during lockdowns:

• Businesses that operate from a premise that had to close during lockdown, but do not pay business rates (for example businesses in shared office spaces, rent-a-chair hairdressers or non-essential market traders).

• Mobile or home-based businesses that had to cease trading during lockdown (such as mobile beauticians or driving instructors). 

• Closed rated businesses are not generally eligible for a Discretionary Restart Grant, as they should have benefitted from the Government’s rated scheme that has now ended (31 July 2021). That said, any new rated businesses that set up after 1 April 2021 may be considered if they can demonstrate an ongoing rental commitment to a rated premises. 

• This grant is not a wage replacement scheme and must be used to fund the ongoing costs of your business.

You own/run a business that was able to open during lockdowns, but whose trade was affected because you rely on closed businesses/industries (for example recruitment agencies).

• Businesses that operate from an unrated premise (for example a shared business space), were able to trade during the lockdowns, but whose trade was affected because they rely on closed businesses/industries (for example taxi operators).

• Mobile and home-based businesses that were able to trade during the lockdowns, but were affected by closed businesses or industries or social distancing measures (such as event management companies or training companies). 

• This grant is not a wage replacement scheme and must be used to fund the ongoing costs of your business.

If your business operates in the event, festival, wedding, funeral or independent travel agency field, you may prefer to apply for an Events & Festivals Rescue Grant.

Businesses cannot apply for/be awarded both a Discretionary Restart Grant (Round 2) and an Events & Festivals Rescue Grant. 

Read our policy for a full list of exclusions. 

What funding is on offer?

The grant scheme will offer one-off grants to businesses as follows:

• Strand one - from £1,200.15 up to £2,700 (depending on rateable value).
• Strand two - from £3,600 - £5,400 (depending on rateable value)

Read our policy to find out more about the funding amounts.

Is there a deadline to apply?

The deadline for all applications is 31 December 2021. Please note, only applications that are submitted with all the required evidence will be assessed. 

What evidence do I need to supply?

The evidence you will need to supply will depend on whether you were able to open during lockdowns, or whether your business was legally required to close.

All applicants must supply:

• Photo ID (eg. passport or driver’s licence).
• Your national insurance number (NINO) –  required for all applicants.
• Your unique tax reference (UTR) – if you submit a self-assessment tax return.
• Valid business insurance certificate.
• For food and alcohol businesses only – copies of licences/inspections held.
• For premises-based businesses only – a copy of your rental agreement/evidence of payment of rent (if applicable). 
• For mobile or home-based businesses - details of your fixed costs (for example car rental or machine costs) and evidence of these. 

Minimum additional evidence list (for businesses that could trade legally during lockdowns):

• A set of accounts for 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 signed off by a qualified accountant that demonstrates loss in income, plus three-months of bank statements from January 2021 – April 2021. Bank statements must show business/personal name, address, bank account number and sort code. Please note: Bank account extracts, online/mobile screengrabs or partial statements will not be accepted. 

• If you cannot provide sets of accounts, we will require a minimum of six-months of bank statements from January 2020 - April 2020 and January 2021 - April 2021, plus a signed declaration that the business made a loss in income between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. Please note: Bank account extracts, online/mobile screengrabs or partial statements will not be accepted

• If a new business had not started trading at any point during 2019/2020, the Council cannot guarantee it will award a grant to a new business that was established during the pandemic within an industry that was set to be so heavily affected. The Council will consider any such applications on individual merit and request necessary evidence to back up any claim. See section 3.2 of the policy for more information.

If you have any problems uploading the evidence, please email it to business.grants@southderbyshire.gov.uk. Please include the name of your business in the subject heading.

If you are sending confidential information by email, we strongly recommend you send it to us through a free Egress account at www.egress.com. This will secure your email end-to-end.

Privacy data

As part of the Government’s response to the second national Covid 19 lockdown and tiered measures, the Government has announced a range of business grants.In order to fulfil our obligations and award payments to eligible claimants it will be necessary to verify whether the bank account you have told us about is open and belongs to the business/person proposed.

For the purpose of validating your application we will share your information with external partners such as the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) which is allowed by law to help prevent fraud. Using this data, the NFI will facilitate Experian Finance PLC being able to verify the information you have given us and return a score indicating the strength of the match of data provided. As part of the process we will also provide data to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

We will also share internally for the purpose of fulfilling our obligations as a Local Authority, an example of which would be for the Revenues team to share the data with the Customer Management team.

For further information about how your personal information will be used, please visit www.southderbyshire.gov.uk/privacy where you can see a full copy of our Privacy Notice.  

Alternatively you can request a hard copy from the Customer Service and Revenues & Benefits at customer.services@southderbyshire.gov.uk