 We know there are more businesses in Portsmouth who are entitled to the small business grant or retail, hospitality and leisure grant but have not yet submitted their details online. Please help us to spread the word around the Portsmouth business community. Eligible businesses just need to complete the online form so payments can be made.
When will I get my grant payment?
If you have already applied for a grant you should be receiving payment soon. As of Monday morning we had processed 83% of forms received and made over £20 million payments, some of these payments will still be going through the banking system. Those that have not been processed yet are more complex and are being worked through as quickly as possible.
Payments are being made by BAC's and cheque. Payments by BAC's are quicker and typically take three working days to show in your account. Payments by cheque are dependent on the postal system.
We understand the importance of processing these payments as fast as possible and recognise the enormous pressures that many businesses are under at this time.
 The online claim service for the governments job retention scheme is open for employers to claim 80% of furloughed employees wages plus NI and pension contributions up to a maximum of £2,500. Claims will be paid within six working days, so you must apply by midnight tonight (Wednesday 22 April) to recieve payment by 30 April 2020. Payments will be back dated until 1 March and the scheme has now been extended so it will be open until end June.
Further guidance is available and there is an easy to use, step-by-step guide that takes you through the process.
HMRC are offering live webinars on the Job Retention Scheme to provide an overview of the support available. During the webinars, which take place on Thursday 23 and Friday 24 April they will be taking a look at:
- furloughed workers
- who can apply for the scheme
- following the rules of the scheme
- how much may be claimed
- how to claim and what you’ll need to claim.
Places on the webinar are limited but if you miss this or any of their other recent webinars, you can now view a recording on HMRC’s YouTube channel.
Pay it forward - crowdfunding
 Crowdfund Portsmouth is a crowdfunding initiative we launched earlier this year with Shaping Portsmouth to help local businesses, social enterprises and individuals to raise money from the crowd and unlock match-funding from us and other grants available.
As businesses face worrying times, we have made changes to the scheme to help small businesses adversely affected by the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. We hope you will support our local businesses, social enterprises, creatives and self-employed by 'paying it forward' through the crowdfunding scheme to help these businesses survive.
Portsmouth party DJ, has already achieved the goal set after raising over £2,000 from the crowd and unlocking £2,000 match funding from us.
If you are a business and would like to find out more about applying for the scheme:
 Pall Corporation, whose European head office is in Portsmouth, has announced its participation in a consortium led by the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, to rapidly develop, scale-up and produce a vaccine for COVID-19. Pall Corporation is a global leader in filtration, separation and purification.
ChAdOx1 has been fast tracked as one of the leading vaccine candidates for COVID-19 globally because it generates a strong immune response from one single dose. It is not a replicating virus, eliminating the risk of an ongoing infection, making it safer to use on children, the aging population and those with pre-existing conditions.
Small quantities of clinical material have been manufactured by CBF and the manufacturing process has been transferred to Pall, who will develop the large-scale process to enable the manufacture of millions of doses. The scale-up program will be completed over the next few weeks, at which point the manufacturing process will be transferred to Cobra Biologics, Halix BV and Oxford Biomedica who will begin GMP manufacture of the vaccine candidate in multiple batches.
For more information visit www.pall.com.
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