AQW 13103/17-22

Mr Stewart Dickson
Alliance Party
East Antrim

Tabled Date: 21/01/2021
Answered On Date: 05/02/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for the Economy to detail the average number of days from submitting an application to payment for successful applicants to the Covid Restrictions Business Support Scheme.

Answer:

As at 25th January 2021, Invest NI had received 5,985 applications under the CRBSS, Part A and Part B, with payments made to 4,189 applicants (70%) to a value of £26.1m.

Across both elements of the scheme, on average it takes 15 working days from an application being submitted to a payment issued to successful applicants.

The CRBSS is an evidence based assessment process. Each application needs to be reviewed and assessed based on the evidence submitted by the applicant against the eligibility criteria. This is a vital step in helping ensure the proper and correct use of public funds. Unfortunately within CRBSS, in many cases, the initial evidence submitted with applications has not be of a sufficient quality to allow a decision to be made and so additional evidence has had to be requested from the applicant, often resulting in multiple interactions between the processing team and the applicant. This can, understandably, increase the length of time it takes to process the application.

In addition, the extension and widening of the Health Protection Regulations has also impacted processing, with the scheme reopening to applicants following the extension to regulations on 26 December. This has also resulted in the need to engage more extensively with our governmental colleagues to cross check data across the various multiple emergency COVID schemes that are ongoing to ensure that there is no duplication of funding. Unfortunately, this important governance step will also result in an increase in processing times.

Having engaged extensively with my officials, I can assure you that they are working tirelessly to process applications as quickly as possible and to ensure public resources are directed to the right applicants.