Covid-19 Response: Creative, Tourism and Hospitality Enterprises Hardship Fund

This new fund is available now for grant applications from Scottish-based businesses in the creative, tourism and hospitality sectors that have been affected by Covid-19 but have been unable to access support from any of the other initiatives apart from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS).

This initiative should prove especially important for those hospitality and tourism businesses that haven't been able to benefit from the existing local authority-run grants schemes. These will include such businesses that don't have business premises, as well as those that do have premises but are unable to claim rates grants for any reason, such as not being on the rates register or not being registered for the Small Business Bonus Scheme at the key date of 17 March, or being above the qualifying thresholds for these grants.

Grants of up to £25,000 are available. We haven't seen the application form yet but would assume that applicants will need to decide on the sum they wish to apply for and back up the need for that sum based on evidence such as cash flow projections.

The criteria to be met are as follows:

• the business must have fewer than 50 employees
• the business must have experienced at least a 50% loss of current or projected revenue (the period this covers is not defined)
• the business was not in financial difficulty before 31 December 2019 (the definition of this should be the same as the one discussed in our article on the BBLS which you can find HERE)
• You are not in receipt of other COVID-19 government grant support, except the CJRS (it is not clear at this stage whether government-backed loans will also disqualify applicants)
• You are not a pre-revenue company, i.e. you had already started trading and generating income
• You have a business bank account

Applications can be made now but this scheme, which is being administered by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Enterprise agencies, has a pre-application process. The link below takes you to an initial questionnaire which covers this scheme and the Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund. Once this has been completed you will be sent an email with a link to the full application form for one or other of the schemes.

Pre-Application Questionnaire

To back up the application you will need to provide copy bank statements, financial information including turnover data and cash flow projection, plus proof of eligibility including business registration and tax numbers.