Hello everyone
Happy Wednesday… does the week seem to be flashing by for
you too?
I have to say I’m looking forward to Nicola Sturgeon’s
statement tomorrow – just to see what’s going to happen next.
A couple of updates today.
Okay – statring with support for smaller house builders.
Liquidity Support for SME House Builders
I have to say I hadn’t spotted this one before but I came across
a gov.scot webpage today (which was published 7th May) with details
of loan support for smaller house builders. Smaller is defined as:
·
A non-public organisation
·
Complete five or more homes in Scotland per year
·
Annual turnover of less than £45M
·
Financially viable before COVID-19
·
Can’t get funds from banks or own cash
·
Have tried to get funds from Scottish and UK
governments or other COVID-19 schemes before applying
These are loans… but here are the highlights:
·
loans of between £50,000 to £1 million, which
will normally be limited to a maximum of 25% of annual turnover
·
fixed interest rates of 2% per annum
·
flexible repayment terms, with the option for
capital and interest payments to be offset for 12 months – the majority of
loans are expected to be repaid within 24 months
To apply it’s an email to the Scottish Government – I’ve
added a link below. Scroll down the page a bit and there’s a list of
information needed to apply and an email address to send your applications to.
Here’s the link:
Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund and Creative, Tourism
and Hospitality Fund
Applications for these grants have now closed.
Applications are being reviewed right now and emails
(apparently) have already started going out with one of three responses:
accepted, rejected or more information needed.
Responses should be out to you if you applied within ten
days of your application and it’s not first come, first served.
The success of applications is based on needs, not how fast the application was
submitted.
If your application has been successful you only get three
days to accept the offer of funding so keep an eye on your emails! By the
way, if you are successful in winning a grant you might get offered less than
you applied for.
Finally, on the webpage I’ve been reading there doesn’t
appear to be an appeals procedure but (a little bizarrely I thought) there is a
complaints process.
To read more detail about all of this you can have a look at
this page:
Opening up offices again
Of course we don’t know what Nicola Sturgeon is going to say
on Thursday yet but I guess there will be some news about plans to get everyone
back to work whether it’s this week, next week or sometime in the future.
We’re just thinking about a couple of things relating to our
office… we’re lucky in that we have a big space and we can spread our team out –
we just need to think about making sure we have the office wired properly, tape
on the floor and the right PPE available…
By the way, the government has zero rated (effectively
removed VAT) from PPE equipment relating to COVID-19 protection. The zero
rating covers the period 1st May to 31st July 2020.
If you sell PPE and need help setting up your bookkeeping system for zero rated
supplies, let me know and I’ll sort.
If you are in a similar situation where you have to make
physical changes to your office or workspace let me now and I can put you in
touch with one of our clients who can help.
Second point: we’ve remained fully functional (albeit spread
across the Lothians, Edinburgh and Fife) and that remains the case.
If you’d like us to get started on your tax return and can
give us your records electronically just email them to me – or give me access
to DropBox. If you have records in paper format and want to drop them off
at the office you can put through the letter box or if too big we can arrange a
drop off – just get in touch and we’ll arrange a time just for you so you can
leave the records with us whilst staying a safe distance.
That’s it for today.
Enjoy the weather (if you can) and we’ll see you very soon.
Rowena
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