Decision details

Westminster City Council will receive a 4^th tranche of funding, the amount of which is yet to be confirmed by BEIS. This Cabinet Member Report seeks approval from Cabinet Members to utilise this new tranche of funding to support those businesses most impacted by the new variant.

The Cabinet Member for Finance and Smart City has agreed:

1.     That the proposal as outlined in Section 5 of this report is approved:

·       Utilise the Additional Revenue Grant (ARG) tranche 4 top-up allocation to award top-up grants to eligible business groups through ARG rounds 1 and 2.

2.     That delegated authority be granted to the Executive Director for Finance and Resources and the Executive Director for Growth, Planning and Housing in the event of underspend to:

·       Accordingly re-allocate funding from ARG tranche 3, or tranche 4 to any approved ARG scheme to be able to meet the 31 March 2022 defrayal deadline date.

Reasons for Decision

The proposals outlined in section 5 of this report seek to provide the most appropriate methods to administer the ARG funding and ensure that the right type of support is provided to the most impacted business groups of the Omicron variant, whilst meeting the deadline date set by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) of 31 March 2022 for the full funding allocation to be defrayed.

The delegated authority decision will negate the need for a subsequent Cabinet Member Report to be produced should the funding allocations attributed to the various proposals have to be revised and will mitigate risk of funds not being fully spent and defrayed by 31 March 2022.