Businesses in Oldham have received more than £5 million in grants so far to help them stay afloat during the coronavirus crisis.
The council is administering the government’s small business grant fund and retail, hospitality and leisure grant fund locally, and has handed out £5.5m to date.
The support package will provide help to shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs, bars, cinemas and other venues forced to close as part of the strict lockdown measures announced on March 23.
Chiefs say they are expecting to distribute around £52m in cash grants to businesses in total once all the grant applications have been processed.
Companies are eligible for the cash boost if they were entitled to small business rate relief or rural rate relief on March 11 this year.
Eligible businesses in the retail, hospitality or leisure sector will receive a cash grant of either £10k or £25k per property depending on rateable value, which must be less than £51k.
In addition to the grants, the town hall is also currently rolling out a 12-month business rates holiday for all retail, hospitality, leisure and nursery businesses in the borough.
This will equate to support totalling a further £22.9m, according to bosses.
These businesses will receive a revised bill confirming they have no business rates to pay in 2020/21.
Coun Abdul Jabbar, cabinet member for finance and corporate services, said: “We are working tirelessly to get these payments out as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“We know these are worrying times for businesses of all sizes and we are doing all we can to support you at this time.
“We have thousands of payments to make so it will really help us if you can go online at www.oldham.gov.uk/cashgrants and complete the form on this page.
"Doing this ensures we have all the information we need to issue payments as quickly as possible.”
A wider support package from both central government and the local authority for medium and large businesses and workers is also available.
It includes a ‘coronavirus job retention scheme’, deferring VAT and self-assessment payments and a statutory sick pay relief package for small and medium sized businesses.
