NNDC "immensely proud" of officers administering vital Government grants

Date published: 14th January 2021

North Norfolk District Council is pleased that it has been independently recognised that the authority has performed strongly in the delivery of numerous COVID grant schemes, awarding financial support to North Norfolk businesses affected by COVID, according to figures compiled by the New Anglian Local Enterprise Partnership.

The grant schemes come from Government funding paid to the local authority, where it is then processed and awarded against the various grants to eligible applicants.

The data shows the performance of the District Council in awarding the grant payments ranks the highest among local authorities in the County in terms of amount paid out, number of recipients and percentage of total government allocation awarded.

In the period since the second national lockdown in November the Council has administered various schemes of the Local Restrictions Support Grant, with £4.4 million paid out to eligible businesses forced to close, the highest amount awarded by any District in the County.

A further £1.3 million was awarded to businesses which were allowed to open, but were directly affected by COVID measures; and through the Christmas Support Payments, £49,000 was issued to wet-led pubs who could not open under Government guidance.

Between April and June 2020, the Council paid out £51.9 million in business grants to 94.9% of eligible businesses in North Norfolk with the Council again paying out the largest amount of grant funds to local businesses in the County within a very short period of time as recorded in national Government reporting tables.

Yesterday the Council has started issuing out grant payments for businesses affected by the Tier 4 restrictions between 26 December 2020 and 4 January 2021, issuing £1.58m to 79% of eligible businesses on the first day.

Richard Kershaw, Cabinet Member for Sustainable Growth, praising the performance on grant payments, said:

“I am immensely proud of the efforts of our officer team over the past nine months in administering these vital grant funds on behalf of the Government.  Our local economy and businesses have been significantly affected by the COVID pandemic and the Council’s focus has been on making payments to eligible businesses as quickly as possible in accordance with the Government guidance which is complex and has changed over time.  With the current national lockdown the work of the team goes on and we are ready to pay out the further funding support to businesses which the Government has announced in the past few days.”

For any businesses who applied for any grants from November 2020, the Council will make assessments against eligibility for any future upcoming grant schemes and contact businesses to let them know what they will be entitled to and when they will receive it, meaning businesses in North Norfolk will not have to manually apply for each iteration of government support. Any business who applied prior to November is invited to do so again to be included. 

The latest grant fund, the Additional Restrictions Grant opened for applications on 11 January, which supports businesses impacted by previous lockdown restrictions between 5 November and 2 December and previously ineligible for previous grants. Full guidance can be found on our Additional Restrictions Grant page.