COTSWOLD District Council is reassuring businesses who have applied for Covid-19 grant applications.

To date, the council has paid out £1,763,554 to 1,110 businesses using the mandatory and discretionary schemes in force for the lockdown ending on December 2.

Applications covering the Tier 3 and 4 restrictions period from December 2 to January 4 are in the process of being assessed, along with payments to pubs where food comprises up to 50 per cent of their income.

The council finance team is also now reviewing fresh Government guidance for the new lockdown one-off top-up grant for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, valued at £4,000, £6,000 or £9,000 per property, depending on rateable value.

Cllr Tony Dale, cabinet member for the economy said: “We appreciate business concerns and our team is working incredibly hard to process applications as quickly as possible.

“An already complicated set of grants has been made more so by the new lockdown but I would like to reassure business owners that we will process payments as soon as we can and provide updates on new rounds of grants once we have received all of the guidance.”

Information on the grants available during lockdown are available on the council’s business grants webpage.