Hundreds of city centre shops and bars could go out of business because a Government help scheme excludes them, organisations representing city centres in the North East say.
Business Improvement District companies in Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham have joined the national #RaiseTheBar campaign which is aiming to extend the Government’s rescue package for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses.
The current scheme - which offers grants of £10,000 or £25,000 to companies in parts of the economy most affected by the coronavirus lockdown - is available to companies with a rateable value of up to £51,000. More than £350m has been distributed by the scheme in the North East councils, with thousands of companies benefitting.
But many city centre shops, bars and clubs are above that limit, and Business Improvement Districts from around the country are calling on the Government to raise the threshold to £150,000 to stop companies going bust.
NE1 Ltd, which represents 1,400 Newcastle city centre businesses, has calculated that nearly 250 of its businesses in the retail and leisure industry would benefit if the eligibility criteria was changed.
Chief executive Adrian Waddell said: “We need our business community to be a position to lead the bounce back when this comes. If 17% of our businesses are missing out on over £6m of emergency funding and don’t get the help they so desperately need, how many of them will still be around when we emerge from this crisis?
“The retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are crucial to the fabric of Newcastle – they make a huge economic contribution and support tens of thousands of jobs for the local community but more than that, they form the cornerstone of Newcastle’s unique cultural offer and we underestimate their importance at our peril.”
Sharon Appleby, head of business operations at Sunderland BID, said: “This is a crucial time for all businesses and we know that many are missing out on getting this Government grant because of their rateable value.
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“The value that these sectors bring to our local economy and to the economy of towns and cities across the 海角视频 is huge and they absolutely need our support.
“We are fully behind this campaign and will be adding our voice to those of other BIDS, British BIDS, the BID Foundation, industry trade bodies and politicians to lobby the Government to raise the current threshold.”
The #RaiseTheBar campaign - which also includes Association of Town and City Management, 海角视频 Hospitality, Beer and Pub Association, Night Time Industries Association - has written Business Secretary Alok Sharma to highlight the plight of city centre businesses.
Matthew Sims, chief executive of Croydon BID which has spearhearded the campaign, has acknowledged that the changes would increase the burden on central and local government.
But he said: “This is a price we believe is worth paying to ensure businesses are given the opportunity to become part of the greater push to mobilise our economy, rather than leaving premises empty, growing unemployment with or without the job retention scheme and sectors contracting across the board.”
In a separate move, struggling high street stores, the Government has announced that restaurants and pubs hit by the lockdown will be given extra protection to stop landlords dragging companies to court to recover rent.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said statutory demands and winding-up petitions issued to commercial tenants will be temporarily voided during the coronavirus lockdown.
Ministers said the temporary emergency measures are “designed to acknowledge the pressures landlords are facing while encouraging co-operation in the spirit of fair commercial practice”.