Nearly £60m of relief paid out to Telford businesses throughout coronavirus pandemic

Telford & Wrekin Council is believed to be one of the first in England to complete and close its own discretionary grant fund to businesses after it became fully subscribed.

One of the authority's first responses to the pandemic was to set up a business helpline for support and advice to borough businesses.

In total, the team had more than 5,100 contacts with businesses on how to access grants, apply for business rates relief, benefit from loan support and many other schemes to help firms through this difficult time.

One of the council’s priorities has been to process as fast as possible applications for government’s business support grants, including the authority's own discretionary grant scheme.

It has also written twice to all businesses in the borough in March and again in June promoting the support available to them.

In total, £28.5 million in national business support grants has been paid to 2,395 businesses. A total of £1.4m has also been distributed under the discretionary grant scheme.

This puts the council among the leading authorities in the country for getting business support grants paid out as quickly as possible.

This comes as the council expressed "disappointment" at the amount of government funding given to its discretionary business grant scheme.

Cabinet lead for finance, councillor Rae Evans said: “I want to thank all our business support and revenues teams which have worked their socks off to get these grants and rate relief to businesses so quickly.

”It’s down to their commitment and long hours work that we’ve managed to help so many businesses, approve such a high number of grants applications so far and do so at pace.

“However, we are deeply disappointed that our discretionary business grant scheme, was able to help only a relatively small number of businesses who had fallen through the cracks, because the amount we’ve received from government simply wasn’t enough to meet demand.

“We’ve extended the criteria for this grant’s scheme beyond Government’s priority list, meaning many more borough businesses could get much needed support but with only £1.4m of grant available, the fund has now been fully subscribed.

“We know some businesses (including the self-employed) face a really serious financial challenge.

“Our focus now is on lobbying the Government for more help for those who have still fallen through the cracks, so that we can re-open our Discretionary Fund as soon as possible, to help more businesses.”