Less than a third of councils have handed out Covid business rates relief

Most councils have failed to hand out their share of the £1.5bn Covid relief package for businesses. Last March Rishi Sunak said the scheme, set up to support companies in England with business rates bills during the Covid crisis, would provide cash “quickly and fairly” via councils. However, research shows that fewer than one in three councils have made any payments from the relief fund. Two-thirds of local authorities are yet to “establish any kind of scheme” to distribute the money, according to Gerald Eve, which conducted the research. Jerry Schurder, business rates policy lead at Gerald Eve, said: “The government claimed [the fund] was the fastest and fairest way of getting support to businesses that need it the most, but the past year has shown this to be complete hyperbole. In fact, the opposite is true.” He said that the government bore responsibility for the delay since the sums each council would be allowed to distribute were only confirmed in December. Councils are each having to set up their own distribution process, which he said had created further delay. Of the 309 councils in England, to date only 100 have started making payments, Gerald Eve found. It said that of the schemes that were in place, 46 did not provide an indication of the size of potential payments, with some stating that relief would only be decided once all applications had been received “giving struggling businesses no financial certainty and pushing the prospect of them receiving any cash even further into the future”. The Times (£)