Watching news stories of police breaking up illegal raves across the U.K proves if nothing else the youth of today do not take too well to lockdowns and curfews. Listening to the old folk of Britain stating they do not want to be under house arrest, proves even those much older and wiser folk are in agreement.
Watching Boris waffling on about the next lockdown whilst we are shown “slides” of England in different shades of colour representing the spread of the virus, and then hearing quite chillingly that virus being referred to more and more as a disease is enough to make you want to scream.
Like it or not, this week lockdown 2.0 will be upon us all, and that does once again spell financial disaster for many self-employed folk across the land, many of whom have had no help for the past 5 months or so anyway.
Business Grants are on the way but as we know many small business will not qualify for them, and with the next SEISS being reduced in value to 40% from its starting point of 80%, the powers that being are still trying to convince us that is a doubling of its value, well it is if you take into account they reduced it from 80% to 70% then to 20% then increased the latter up to 40% it has been doubled I suppose.
As I am focused on Bounce Back Loans, I will stick to what I know about them.
Rishi Sunak does need to make an appearance at some point in time this week, which I am convinced he will do to let the nation know what additional financial help will be available to everyone during the new lockdown.
But I am not convinced he is going to do the two most urgent things regarding Bounce Back Loans, the first being allowing those who have taken one out to top them up, if he did allow that I am sure many people would take him up on that offer, and it would go a little way to help many small business owners through the next month or so at least.
The other thing that he has no control over sadly is forcing Bounce Back Loan lenders to accept new business account customers, as such lots of people now have no way of getting a BBL, much more so if they have been declined by lenders such as Starling who while they do accept new customers are making it known they are prioritising customers who have been with them for quite some time, and inviting them off their waiting list ahead of new customers, with no guarantee of approving them anyway due to their own added criteria.
As you are aware Rishi is planning new loan schemes for the New Year, I am often asked what they will be like and how they are being designed, to tell you the truth on that front, I doubt even Rishi knows the finer points yet, as he only announced them recently.
There is of course always the chance he will bring forward those new loans, in whatever form they are and make them available earlier, or he could extend the BBL scheme further, the latter would be pointless though with no lenders offering new accounts to customers and no sign of any new lenders anyway.
As always the self-employed are going to have to struggle through and once again wait to find out if they are going to be eligible for any additional financial aid, so sadly that is what we must all do, wait, and just hope Rishi dreams up a new way of helping us battle through November and beyond, if such help isn’t forthcoming then I am sure it will be game over for many more businesses