AQW 4106/17-22

Mr Stewart Dickson
Alliance Party
East Antrim

Tabled Date: 13/05/2020
Answered On Date: 12/06/2020
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for the Economy, for each of the COVID-19 business support schemes her Department has responsibility for, to detail (i) the number of applications; (ii) the number of successful applications; (iii) the number of applications still waiting to be processed; and (iv) the average waiting time from application to the payment of funds.

Answer:

£10,000 Small Business Support Grant

For the £10,000 Small Business Support Grant Scheme, 6,775 payments were made automatically to eligible businesses, in receipt of Small Business Rate Relief, whose direct debit details were held by Land & Property Services for ratings purposes. 15,955 applications were submitted via an online web portal.

Of these web portal applications a total of 13,385 have been successfully paid to date.

There are 2,570 applications still being processed. There are also an additional 1,279 applications which were made through a separate online rental portal, These require additional checking to ensure the business, and not the landlord, receives the grant.

LPS has advised that it is not possible to calculate an average waiting time between application and payment. The range of waiting times is between three days and eight weeks, with the length of time required in each case driven by the complexity of the issues which need to be resolved before the payment can be released.

£25,000 Business Support Grant

For the £25,000 Retail, Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Grant scheme, 3,624 applications were received before the scheme closed on 20 May 2020. This figure includes 686 duplicate and ineligible applications.

As of 26 May 2020, 2,890 applications have been approved for payment. A further 34 applications are still to be processed.

The average waiting time from receipt of application to approval for payment is 13 days. Payment may take an additional three to five days to reach the applicant’s bank account.

A further breakdown of the number of applications, successful applications and applications being processed is published in the ‘Operation of the scheme by council, constituency and sector’ section on the following webpage - https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/coronavirus-£25000-retail-hospitality-tourism-and-leisure-grant.

This data is updated on a regular basis