Online Facilitation of Business Support Payments and Grants
Making headline news throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been the Government's support of businesses through grants and other payments.
A vital element in this support structure has been the ability of local authorities to administrate the applications submitted by businesses and facilitate the distribution of the money in a timely fashion.
The support made available by the Government has fallen into two main categories: payments and grants aimed at existing businesses, and grants to help new businesses who had begun trading over the past year (between 1st April 2019 and 1st March 2020).
Grant Relief applications for established businesses closed on the 30th June 2020 and by that date 4250 forms had been received by Powys County Council via the online facility developed by the Digital Access (Web) Team. Data collected from the online form was automatically recorded, allowing the service area to download the submitted forms in batches as required. This system was developed by a junior member of the team and significantly improved the efficiency of the process, allowing the authority to facilitate the payment of an unprecedented volume of applications over this timeframe.
Building on this success, the Start Up Grants for new Businesses are also being administrated through an online application system. In this case, as a result of the expected difference in application volume, the information extracted from the completed forms is emailed directly to the service and is also made available to download as an Excel spreadsheet sited in the service's secure area of the authority's website. Applications for this grant opened on the 30th June 2020 and to date 98 forms have been received. This system was also developed by a junior member of the team.
Further information regarding our work may be viewed at Digital Powys