A GROUP of small-business owners believe an appeals system – allowing claimants of the government’s Co-Funded Payroll Scheme to challenge repayment requirements – is not fit for purpose.
Sophie Walton, on behalf of a number of small-business owners, has written to the Chief Minister asking that Islanders be allowed to appeal against the repayment demands on the basis that the government made an error on the requirements of the scheme.
Earlier this year, a number of small-business owners told the JEP that they had been left stressed after being asked to repay money which they had been given through the scheme, which subsidised wages for hard-hit businesses during the height of the Covid-19 crisis.
In October, as part of Deputy Moore’s 100-day plan, she set up an appeals process to give claimants the opportunity to have their repayment amounts reassessed.
‘The majority of claims affected are due to an error with the States Co-Funded Payroll claims website,’ says Ms Walton in the letter. ‘This is due to the requirements regarding the gross and net profit figures input for each claim.
‘The website requested gross figures, then confirmed by email to each claim the gross profit figures given. The Co-Funded team has recently stated this was an error and it was meant to be net profit, not gross profit.
‘We are now advised that any business who intends to appeal will not be able to base an argument on a claim relating to this gross and net profit issue. This error, not of our making, will be a factor in the vast majority of claims and it is in our opinion entirely prejudicial and unjust to automatically exempt this issue. It is clearly a relevant factor and not one of our members’ making.’
The group have requested that the appeal system includes claims relating to the gross and net profit issue and that an inquiry be held into the system to find out how the mistakes were made.
Ms Walton says that small businesses have ‘no voice’ and have been forced to ‘put up and shut up’ over the issue.
‘Smaller business owners are looking down the barrel of a gun, liable to refund many tens of thousands of pounds at a time when they are still struggling to recover from the pandemic and facing each wave after wave of economic woe that is thrown at them,’ the letter says.
‘Given the serious errors in set-up with the matter and this now some 18 months without resolve we are minded to raise this issue as a complaint to the States Complaints Board.
‘However, we wish to give your good selves the time to consider this and respectfully request your valued advice within 14 days.’
