Almost £50m paid out in grants to businesses affected by pandemic

By Rebecca Black, PA

Almost £50 million in Covid relief grants has been paid out to businesses in Northern Ireland.

Stormont Finance Minister Conor Murphy said officials are continuing to work through applications forms as he outlined the latest position in the Assembly with regard to the localised restrictions support scheme.

He said: “13,925 applications have been received, 7,025 have been approved resulting in £49m being paid to local businesses.

“4,198 applications have been rejected.”

Non-essential retail, hospitality and close contact services were again closed down on November 27 for two weeks as coronavirus cases spiked for a second time.

A grant scheme for that period of restrictions has received more than 2,000 applications.

Of these, 497 have so far been approved with almost £1m paid out while 500 applications were deemed ineligible.

“Staff were working through the weekend to clear the outstanding cases as quickly as possible and I expect more payments will be released this afternoon,” he added.

DUP MLA David Hilditch detailed frustration for some businesses who have yet to see any payments.

David Hilditch

Mr Murphy responded saying there had been a high level of ineligible applications.

“The purpose of these schemes is to get money as quickly as possible out on to the ground, and the applications have to match, they have to be correct, and there was a high level, for some reason, of applications that were inaccurate in terms of business addresses, bank account details and ineligible for the scheme and perhaps applying for the wrong scheme,” he said.

Meanwhile Mr Murphy confirmed that a number of supermarkets have indicated they will repay grant money they received.

He said the scheme was less generous in Northern Ireland where large food stores enjoyed a rates holiday for four months, compared with 12 months in Great Britain.

“To date Tesco and Asda are the only supermarkets to contact me directly to say they would like to return the rate relief, however I’m aware that other large retail chains operating here including Sainsbury’s, Lidl, B&M Bargains and the Kingfisher Group, which includes B&Q and Screwfix, intend to repay the rate relief as well,” he said.