Meeting on Outdoor Opening

Today  April 15th, 2pm-3pm on the new final draft outdoor guidelines in anticipation of the reopening outdoors of hospitality on Monday, April 26th.

We hope you are able to attend. For those that can't, we will be recording the session and it will be available shortly afterwards.Please feel free to circulate to your member businesses.Note: you will need to register and the link to make it all happen is here:

Non-Domestic Rates (NDR) Linked GrantsFollowing the First Minister’s announcement on 12 March 2021, two new Non Domestic Rate linked grants are being introduced:The additional support will help businesses in the hospitality, tourism, leisure and non-essential retail sectors that pay non-domestic rates and will operate as a top up to the Restrictions Business Fund.

This will see an eligible business with a rateable value of £12,000 or less receive an extra £4,000 grant payment.Firms with a rateable value of between £12,001 and £500,000 will receive £5,000.The funding, which will help businesses with their costs up to 31 March 2021, will be available to firms regardless of the number of employees and ensures micro businesses benefit from the support.Local authorities will again be administering and distributing both these payments. Businesses that pay non-domestic rates and have already received a payment since the firebreak in October via their Local Authority do not need to take action and will begin receiving payment via the Restrictions Business Fund into their bank account during March 2021. However, businesses that have not registered with their local authority, registration process will open from Monday 15 March 2021 and the application window will close at 5pm on 31 March 2021.Last but not least, FM today announced that from Sat 27 March "self contained" accom would be able to reopen. This includes self-catering; holiday parks and hotels with room service AND alcohol.Please note the BBC report here and the additional embedded report for your information:"Wales' first minister also said self-contained accommodation would be allowed to reopen from 27 March, as long as cases remained low, but people can only go with their own household.But Mark Drakeford warned any further reopening would be halted if holiday providers took bookings from outside of Wales."Kind regards,Dave