Patience needed for business payments

Thursday 23 April 2020

More than £3.5million worth of claims for financial support have now been processed by the States of Guernsey working to prop up businesses affected by the lockdown.

Acknowledging the backlog in dealing with those claims, the States Chief Executive said staff caught up somewhat last weekend, processing hundreds within a couple of days.

"I haven't got the exact figures with me of where we are in current process," said Paul Whitfield at Wednesday's press briefing, "but we caught up by about 300 at the weekend. We also received another 150 over the weekend. So it's a moving feast."

Mr Whitfield was responding to concerns raised with Express by some hoteliers that they have not yet received funds despite applying to the States as per the guidelines. 

He said all applications are being processed and any business which hasn't yet done so, should also apply, but everyone needs to be patient. 

"We would encourage, if you haven't already made that claim and it's now becoming more apparent that you need to do so, then please just get them into the business support unit.

"I would emphasis some tolerance and patience. We started off with half a dozen handlers as I said in my update and we've not got 60 call handlers working on business support, individual support and the hardship fund. So we are gearing up as per demand, but of course we've got to make sure we put on call handlers that can actually work on those particular business cases, so please yes just encourage people to apply." 

For more information on the financial support available to businesses go to gov.gg/coronavirus.

Pictured top: Paul Whitfield.