PRESS RELEASE
SIR GRAHAM BRADY
Member of Parliament for Altrincham and Sale West
Sir Graham Brady welcomes the success of his campaign to secure cash for Altrincham Market traders
Altrincham Market says its eligible traders will now be able to secure a £10,000 grant after the Chancellor closed a loophole that denied covid 19 small business grants to businesses that share a space, not paying business rates directly.
The market had called on the government to “pull its finger out” after discovering last month that because it had sought to simplify rate collection by consolidating all their businesses under one business rate, Market House’s businesses – such as Honest Crust Pizza and Tender Cow – were not eligible.
Local MP Sir Graham Brady has been lobbying government for several weeks to address the loophole, raising the issue in the media, in Parliament, and privately, receiving an assurance from Chancellor Rishi Sunak that he would look into the matter.
Sir Graham phoned Nick Johnson at the market on Friday to say he had been successful in securing the change that would benefit the market and all businesses in a similar position.
An update from the market reads: “A glimmer of good news came last night when Sir Graham Brady rang to say that he’d just got off the phone to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak and all businesses that share space and pay rates through an intermediary but don’t have that critical ‘billing number’ will now be eligible for discretionary support from their local authorities and a pot of money (we think it was £1.2bn but don’t quote us on that) had been set aside to pay it.
“It means that each of the eligible businesses will now get the £10k grant that eluded them because of a set of inflexible rules that we set out in our FB post a few weeks ago.”
Sir Graham said: This is great news for market traders, businesses using serviced offices and hundreds of thousands of small businesses that were otherwise disadvantaged. It is particularly welcome that we can now get support to small catering businesses that have been required to cease trading by the Government but which had been excluded from support for a purely technical reason’
ENDS
