The Parliamentary Questions drafted by us for Mark Eastwood MP have been answered.

For FRB members, this provides further information on eligibility for the latest Government grants, which the Chancellor announced last week. This can be used when applying to your Local Authority for the second grant. It would appear from the Minister’s response that if you have been eligible for the first grant you will be automatically be eligible for the second.

Bookmakers: Additional Restrictions Grant

Mark Eastwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether on-course bookmakers are eligible for Additional Restrictions Grant funding; and whether guidance on eligibility requirements has been provided to local authorities.

Mark Eastwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what financial support is available to (a) on-course bookmakers and (b) other businesses that are unable to work as a result of restrictions on sporting events but have not been ordered to close during the covid-19 outbreak.

Nigel Huddleston: The Chancellor announced on 5 January another £4.5 billion in new lockdown grants to support businesses and protect jobs. This includes one-off top up grants to be delivered by local authorities for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, worth up to £9,000 per property, to help them through to the spring. A £594 million discretionary fund has also been made available to support other impacted businesses. Local authorities will receive the funding for these one-off grants next week, and we encourage them to make payments to businesses as soon as possible. All local authorities in England will receive a top-up worth a total of £500m to their allocation from the Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG), which has already provided local authorities with £1.1 billion. This funding will ensure that local authorities can make discretionary grants to businesses which are not eligible for the LRSG (Closed) but which are nonetheless experiencing a severe impact on their business due to the national lockdown. Eligibility for the one-off grants, as well as the existing LRSG (Closed) grants, is automatic. Businesses should contact their local authorities for more information on how to receive these grants, and in some cases they will need to provide additional information to their LAs. Local authorities will run application schemes for the ARG, including for the £500m top-up, and will have significant discretion when it comes to deciding which businesses receive payments. Businesses should contact their local authorities for more information. ARG guidance for LAs was first published on 3rd November 2019 and is updated regularly:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-restrictions-support-grants-lrsg-and-additional-restrictions-grant-arg-guidance-for-local-authorities