We just wanted to reach out and remind you that there is currently lots of help available from the Government, HMRC and the country’s banks to help businesses reduce or defer cost in the short term in order to maximise the chances of survival at a time when turnover may have significantly reduced and cash flow could well have been adversely impacted. By taking advantage of these schemes, businesses that were essentially healthy prior to the COVID-19 pandemic will hopefully return to good health on the other side.
As you’ll no doubt be aware, there are schemes now in place to, among other things, preserve jobs and support the self-employed, allow the deferral of payments to HMRC and to provide access to emergency bank funding (CBILS). These schemes are still evolving and, in many cases, the detail has yet to be finalised – but rest assured, the team at Leonard Curtis are monitoring developments closely on a daily basis to ensure we’re up to speed with what’s available and how it can help you and your clients. There’s a link to HMRC’s page providing their latest guidance on the schemes available here.
Additionally, last week the Government announced plans to relax the insolvency rules around wrongful trading effective from 1 March 2020. While this has not yet been passed into law, it is expected to be approved, and is intended to give directors the confidence to do their best to keep trading during these difficult times without the threat of personal liability should their efforts be unsuccessful and the company subsequently falls into an insolvency process.
We appreciate that at this difficult time, both you and your clients may be worried about what the future holds, have questions over how some of these support schemes will work in reality, and you may well be starting to see some financial distress. Whatever challenges you and your clients are dealing with – we just wanted to reassure you that we’re here to help, or simply to talk things through.
If you feel any of our team of specialists can help then don’t hesitate to get in touch with your local Leonard Curtis contact.