Small Business Grant and Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant

Discretionary Grants Fund - Round 2

This grant funding is for businesses that are not eligible for other support schemes.

Businesses which have received cash grants from any central Government Covid-19-related scheme are ineligible for funding from the Discretionary Grants Fund. Such grant schemes include but are not limited to:

Small Business Grant Fund
Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant

However, businesses who have applied for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme are eligible to apply for this scheme.

The Wolverhampton discretionary grant second round is aimed at small businesses who:

have relatively high ongoing property costs
have suffered a significant fall in income due to the Covid-19 crisis

Round 1

Applications for Round 1 opened on Monday, June 8, 2020, and closed on Monday, June 15, 2020.

Round 1 of the scheme was open to the following types of businesses:

Micro and Small businesses - with 10 or less employees - in shared offices or other flexible workspaces. Examples could include units in industrial parks, science parks and incubators which do not have their own business rates assessment;
Regular market traders with fixed building costs, such as rent, who do not have their own business rates assessment;
Bed & Breakfasts which pay Council Tax instead of business rates;
Charity properties in receipt of charitable business rates relief which would otherwise have been eligible for Small Business Rates Relief or Rural Rate Relief;

More than 130 businesses received grants from the round 1 process. Decision notices have been sent to all the applicants that have been assessed and verified.

Round 2a

The fund is closed to new applications.

Applications for Round 2a will open at 10am on Monday, August 17th, 2020, and close at 4pm on Friday August 28th, 2020. The businesses eligible to apply and the amount of grant funding they could receive is detailed in the table below:

Small businesses listed above in Round 1 in the City with a Rateable Value of up to £51,000 and employing up to 50 staff or;	£5,000
Small businesses in the City with a Rateable Value above £51,000 and employing up to 50 staff or;	£10,000
When assessing these applications, in a few exceptional circumstances where failure of the business and risk of redundancies would have a significant impact on the local economy, grants may be awarded above £10,000. Priority will be given to businesses that have suffered a longer period of closure or a considerable loss due to Covid-19.

The aim is to assess applications and issue decision notices by Friday, September 11th, 2020.

Applications received after the closing date will not be considered as eligible for this scheme.

The grants will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Grant Scheme Details

All applications must be accompanied by evidence in support of the points below:

Businesses which occupy property, or part of a property, with a rateable value or annual rent or annual mortgage payments below £51,000, or above £51,000 depending on the grant that you are applying for
Businesses that have ongoing fixed building related costs
Businesses which can demonstrate that they have suffered a significant fall in income due to the Covid-19 crisis. This will be a fall from March to June 2020
The number of employees you have working in your business depending on the grant that you are applying for
Businesses that were trading on March 11, 2020.
Businesses are not be in administration or insolvent where a striking-off notice has been made
Businesses must be based in Wolverhampton

In a few exceptional cases, based on the above information, applicants may receive a grant higher than £10,000 where failure of the business and risk of redundancies would have a significant impact on the local economy.

Application process

We will keep you updated on the status of your application. If we require additional information, a member of our team will be in touch either by email or telephone call.

Applications for the grant are to be made via the link to the online form at the bottom of this page. If you already have a City of Wolverhampton Council ‘My Account’ then you can use these account details to sign in. If not please create a new account.

If you have already submitted a form for round 2, please do not complete another online form, as this may cause further delay to the processing of your original form.

Additional Details

The Council will not accept deliberate manipulation and fraud. Any business caught falsifying their records to gain additional grant money will face prosecution and any funding issued will be subject to claw back.