While the ACT’s COVID-19 business support grant program been criticised for being slow and onerous on business owners, $220 million of payments have been approved to nearly 8,300 businesses.
COVID-19 Business Support Grants ranging from $15,000 to $100,000 were made available to ACT businesses during lockdown where turnover had declined by 30 per cent or more due to the public health measures.
Extension and top up payments have automatically applied to approved businesses as lockdown has been extended.
Applications closed on 7 October.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr yesterday told reporters that additional extension payments have given to a further 5,087 businesses out of 11,691 over lockdown.
A further 1,125 applications have passed through first stage while 709 need further information and 158 have been declined.
Mr Barr said the businesses yet to receive a payment haven’t do so yet due to only filing their application in the last few weeks.
“We can’t process and application we haven’t received,” he said.
“We’ve been receiving applications every day through the process and those ones have only come in in the last couple of weeks.”
On the contrary, Phillip business community president Tom Adam yesterday told the Legislative Assembly’s Select Committee on the COVID-19 2021 pandemic response that engagement with the team managing the grants has been arduous and vague.
“The members that I have spoken to within my own community … they have supplied everything that has been required and it’s been a lack of understanding by the grants team,” he said.
Mr Adam said the grants team had personally acknowledged to him “how difficult it was” and that they “had not engaged with business groups” like his to discuss how the system could best work for small businesses, instead choosing to consult accountants.
“I spoke to another business who applied on the 15th of September and late yesterday (13 October) received an email asking for further information for their application,” he said. “But it was not detailed what that information was.
“When they followed the steps of how to do it, there was no information requiring them to do it, a phone call was received by a blocked number and a message left with no way for them to contact them and call back.”
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