More than 1,800 North Wales businesses receive share of £34m support from the Economic Resilience Fund

More than 1,800 North Wales businesses have received support from the Welsh Government’s Economic Resilience Fund (ERF).

Businesses in the region have received a share of £34m of funding, helping them to protect more than 14,000 jobs.

The ERF is part of the Welsh Government’s £1.7 billion package of support for businesses. It also includes over 65,000 awards worth £750m of business rate relief to help them respond to financial challenges due to the pandemic.

The fund has seen £150m worth of crucial grants provided to businesses, helping them deal with the impacts of coronavirus.

Across Wales 9,000 businesses have received funding from the scheme – protecting around 75,000 jobs.

Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates said the fund has been designed specifically to “provide vital support for businesses.”

He said: “We wanted to get the funding out to businesses as quickly as possible and so far in North Wales tens of millions of pounds has gone out, helping protect more than 14,000 jobs.

“The ERF was set up to plug the gaps left in the UK Government’s support and I’m pleased that the fund is supporting businesses which otherwise would have been left behind.

“In North Wales we are working closely with all our partners including local authorities, North Wales Economic Ambition Board and Mersey Dee Alliance as we face these challenging times together.”

The second phase of the ERF, which closed on Friday 10 July, extended support to non-VAT registered limited companies and businesses that started after March 2019.

A separate £5m fund established to specifically to support start-up firms not helped by the UK Government’s Self Employment income support scheme remains open for applications. The grant scheme will support up to 2,000 start-ups in Wales with a grant of £2,500 each.