This decision was originally made to suspend these payments for four weeks in response to the Prime Minister’s advice given on Monday 16th March to avoid pubs, restaurants, theatres, office environments and non-essential travel, to limit the spread of COVID-19.
However, following the Prime Minister’s announcement on Friday 20th March to close all pubs, restaurants and cafes, the decision was made to extend this for a further four weeks.
Chris Chapman, Head of Business Partnerships at H&W, explained: “We are committed to providing our Business Partners with the financial support and advice needed to help them through this period of uncertainty and felt it was only right to take immediate action.
“We are grateful to the Government for making available employee retention support, as well as providing business interruption loans or grants to our Business Partners, but we feel it is only right that we enhance our help given.
“We know that the situation is evolving at speed and we are monitoring the situation closely and will adjust our support according to any advancements. We will come through this together, and when we do, we want our Business Partners to have the finances in place to allow them to recover as quickly as possible.”