New £6,000 cash grants for hospitality from Rishi Sunak to help cover Christmas cancellations

New cash grants will be available for pubs and restaurants impacted by the Omicron variant, the Treasury has announced. 

On Tuesday, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak promised one-off grants of up to £6,000 per premises for businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors in England.

More than £100m of discretionary funding will also be given to local councils to administer, while the Government will also cover the cost of Statutory Sick Pay for Covid-related absences for small and medium-sized employers across the UK. 

The Treasury said in an announcement it recognised December is the industry’s “most profitable time of the year” and quoted UKHospitality figures which showed businesses have lost 40-60 per cent of their seasonal trade. 

Mr Sunak said: “We recognise that the spread of the Omicron variant means businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors are facing huge uncertainty, at a crucial time.  

“Ultimately the best thing we can do to support businesses is to get the virus under control, so I urge everyone to Get Boosted Now.”

Of course, for thousands of pubs and restaurants, £6,000 isn’t close to a lunch service during the holidays, and the grant funding equates – to quote a commentator on Twitter – like “putting sticky plasters on a gunshot wound”. There are similar sentiments from many others.

Ultimately, we have to hope this injection of “immediate, emergency” funding is merely to help businesses get over a difficult Christmas week, and in January, trade can return to normal. Otherwise, we’ll need a far more generous package.

It is also crucial the local authorities are quick to distribute their allocation of the £100m funding, which is for pubs, restaurants, as well as those along the supply chain.

“There is now a real urgency in getting this funding to businesses so we urge local authorities to prioritise distribution of funds to make sure jobs and businesses are preserved through this difficult period,” said UKHospitality CEO Kate Nicholls.

CODE’s Adam Hyman commented: “We welcome that the Chancellor has finally recognised that hospitality needs support at this incredibly challenging time but this package falls woefully short of what businesses need to survive right now, while our industry is stuck in limbo.” 

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