LEP Chief Executive Ruth Carver rounds up the Budget announcements that affect our area.

SMEs
A new temporary coronavirus business interruption loan scheme of up to £1.2m has been made available and business rates have been scrapped for all leisure, hospitality and retail businesses below a rateable threshold of £51,000. This will have a particularly positive impact on our visitor economy sector and on our economy more generally which has a disproportionate number of SMEs.

A £3,000 grant is being offered to very small companies to help prop up businesses as part of measures to mitigate the impact of coronavirus.

In addition, £200m for the British Business Bank and top-up funding for Growth Hubs is a welcome move.

Infrastructure
The A46 was name-checked as a priority for investment within the Road Infrastructure Strategy 2 period, which runs to 2025, and upgrading the Newark bypass was named as a priority. We welcome this commitment as the Newark bypass is a key part of the infrastructure required to access large parts of Greater Lincolnshire, plugging it into other national infrastructure. 

The Government confirmed allocations to the Housing Infrastructure Fund totalling £1.1bn for nine different areas, but we understand that the Grantham HIF bid was unsuccessful, which is disappointing.

The £5bn funding for broadband for some of the hardest to reach locations in the country and the investment in shared rural phone networks are good news for Greater Lincolnshire, which currently has significant connectivity black spots.

Flooding
The Government has doubled the capital investment budget for flood defences over a six-year programme and confirmed a £200m package of place-based resilience schemes centred around improving faster recovery for impacted areas. This is good news for our area which has been hit hard by flooding over the past year. 

Growth Deal
There will be a down payment for LEPs on the Single Local Growth Fund of £380 million. In Greater Lincolnshire we are already well placed to access this fund with over 20 oven-ready schemes across our area. LEPs will also get an additional £10 million for business support and intelligence.

R&D
The budget for research and development has increased significantly, with a £22bn increase per year in public R&D investment. The aim is for R&D spend to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027. This is positive news for Greater Lincolnshire and there is a clear connection to our ambitions around agri-food, the FEZ and local green masterplans.

Economic geography
Finally, there was an interesting but expected move to decentralise swathes of Whitehall and disperse 22,000 civil service jobs to the North. Given our local assets, this could present opportunities for Greater Lincolnshire around our links to DEFRA and the MoD.

Overall a positive Budget for Greater Lincolnshire but one which is dominated by the need to take steps to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy.