The Government of Jersey is reaching out to its tenant business owners to offer deferred rent payments if they have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
Businesses are invited to register so that their circumstances can be reviewed and a deferred rental agreement can be tailored to meet their particular needs. This means arrears can be repaid over an agreed timescale that suits business owners and helps them survive the downturn in trade.
The measures follow proposals set out by Senator Lyndon Farnham, the Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Culture and Sport, to support businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, and Property Holdings has written to its small and medium-sized business tenants setting out how the deferred rental proposals will work.
The Government is also in the process of setting up a business disruption loan guarantee scheme, which will allow business owners to apply for additional funding, as well as a small business emergency fund that may provide additional grant support to self-employed individuals and small businesses.
Additionally, businesses and self-employed individuals can defer Social Security contributions for the first two quarters of the year and GST payments can also be deferred.
Property Holdings Director of Estates Tim Daniels said: “The key aim is to support our business tenants through this challenging time and to give them every opportunity to work through it remaining a viable long-term business.
“Amongst the proposals are for a mechanism to deal with individual applications for rent which will be deferred until the business recovers. In addition, we have reassured our tenants that we will deal with other lease terms – such as opening hours requirements – in a flexible and pragmatic way.
“We have committed to ensuring that our tenants are allocated a single identified officer with whom they can discuss their circumstances and details of any requests.
“Finally, we have sought to re-assure tenants that, during this period of difficulty, we will not be taking action to recover any outstanding rent where the tenant has made representation to us. We remain committed to helping business tenants through this difficult time with these measures.”
Business tenants should email [email protected] to outline their circumstances.
Government of Jersey News Release