News

A total of 294 grants with a combined value of £3,285,000 have been handed out across Angus to local businesses by the Council through the Scottish Government’s Coronavirus Business Support Fund.

271 of those have been grants of £10,000 and 23 have been grants of £25,000 with Angus Council’s finance staff working hard to turn applications around as quickly as possible in recognition of the vital support they provide to local business.

Angus Council Deputy Leader and Finance Convener Angus Macmillan Douglas said: “Businesses across Angus are hard hit by Covid 19 and that includes the worry this situation causes to hard working employees.

“I am so pleased that Angus Council, with help from government, has already handed out nearly 300 grants to local enterprises totalling well over £3 million. That is a tremendous response and there is more to come.”

It is fair to say that the team are extraordinarily busy at present processing applications and issuing grants. If you have submitted a grant application, please wait for the team to be in touch – they will contact you to tell you the outcome of your request or to ask for further information.

Sending in follow-up emails only serves to distract the team from the primary task of making decisions on applications and issuing grants.

Information, including a business support fund application, can be found on our Coronavirus outbreak: business updates webpage.

Angus Council Leader David Fairweather said: “I am grateful to Angus Council’s staff for working very quickly to turn these applications around in support of our local businesses. I don’t think it is overstating the situation to say that these grants could prove to be the difference between business failure and business survival.”

If you are making a business support grant application, please ensure you have included all the relevant information so we can process your request. This includes a scanned copy or image of your bank statement (within the last three months) for the account you want the payment made to.

The application form has now been updated following revised guidance from Scottish Government to the Business Support Fund. This now reflects changes to the scheme criteria to include ratepayers for self-catering accommodation and caravans, both the one-off £10,000 grant for small businesses and the one-off £25,000 grant for businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors.

The grants will be available on the condition that:

• the property is each ratepayer’s primary source of earnings.
• the property is let for 140 days or more in the financial year 2019/20.
• applicants will be required to provide evidence of this, and grants will be restricted to one per ratepayer.

In addition Angus Council has launched a new digital form to replace the pdf version to make applying easier and reduce the number of incomplete forms submitted.

Business Angus is committed to keeping local businesses updated on the latest Covid-19 information as it applies to them. The team has collated the most up-to-date advice from government and support organisations which can be found on the Invest in Angus website.