Number of staff processing business grants is stepped up by Highland Council to cope with demand in wake of Covid-19 coronavirus crisis
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Highland Council is increasing the size of the team responsible for processing small business grants.
The council said that, by Friday, it had received almost 4000 applications, 1000 of which had been processed, to the value of over £12.8 million.
The team dealing with applications had previously been scaled up to over 40 people.
A further 15 members of staff were being trained today.
The council says it hopes the extra capacity will enable it to process 350 applications a day, with a total grant value of approximately £4 million per day.
The council's head of development and regeneration, Allan Maguire, said: “An additional 15 team members have volunteered to help clear the backlog of applications we have received.
“Training is being provided and the staff involved have been granted essential worker status to work from Council HQ so that stable network access is guaranteed.
“All necessary health and safety and social distancing guidelines will be in place. Given the number of applications this will allow further significant progress to be made over the coming week.”
An appeals process is also being put in place to address concerns from businesses that have had their applications turned down.
Mr Maguire added: “All the above measures will lead to an acceleration and we are also continually reviewing the processes to ensure they are as lean as possible.”
Highland Council’s ICT team has been working to improve connectivity for staff.
After some initial issues for staff working from home, the network was expanded to over eight times the previous capacity.
Mr Maguire said: “We cannot thank the dedicated team, including economy and finance staff, other volunteers and IT staff enough for the amount of work they have been doing in the background to ensure as many of business grants are processed and paid as quickly as possible.”
Details on the Small Business Grant scheme and application forms can be found by visiting "Coronavirus Business Grants" on the Highland Council website.
