BY ISABEL EVERETT






A number of Hunter Councils have introduced new measures at Tuesday night’s council meeting’s aiming to provide further support to

businesses

and residents.






Lake Macquarie Council


is set to introduce support measures including;


  • A scaled commercial rent relief program that reduces or waives up to 100% of rent owed to Council by eligible business for a period of up-to six months.


  • A rent relief program for Council’s residential tenants that provides a 50% waiver on rent for tenants significantly impacted by the COVID-19 emergency for a period of up-to six months.

  • Financial Hardship Assistance measures for residents and businesses significantly impacted by the COVID-19 emergency, including waiving of interest on overdue rates and flexible payment plans.

  • Updates to Council’s Financial Hardship Assistance Policy to include businesses and landlords, and the waiving of


    credit card surcharges


    while Council’s Administration Building is closed.



  • The waiving of lease fees for community organisations that lease Council-owned land/and or buildings for a period of six months.

  • A program to enable Council staff to assist community-based organisations, to help deliver critical community services.

“There has been a lot of hard work that has gone in to developing these measures and it’s wonderful that we can now begin to put them in place,” said Lake Macquarie Mayor, Kay Fraser.
“We also know that our local businesses will be hit particularly hard. We have more than 13,000 businesses operating in our City, 98% of which are small businesses. They are feeling the impacts and there is no short-term fix for the current crisis, so that’s why the relief package will be in place for up to six months.”

The majority of the measures will be made available immediately, with the exception of the proposed rent relief package for Council’s commercial and residential tenants which is required to be exhibited for 28 days and once it has been endorsed by Council it will be backdated to the 1st of April 2020.


Maitland Council is also expanding their hardship provisions, suspending interest payments and debt collections.

The Council will use similar criteria to the Federal Governments ‘Job Keeper’ program to determine who is eligible for payment plans to be set up on council payments.

Maitland Council is also working to relieve the rate burden on businesses, by removing the

second tier of the CBD marketing and

promotional

rate that applies to all businesses fronting the levy.

The Council also discussed introducing additional community grants, and plans to get the community back up and running again when the pandemic is over.

“There’ll be a time when communities need to come together again and reconnect, so we’ve been looking at things we can do to support business recovery through marketing and promotional efforts,” Maitland Council General Manager, David Evans said.

“When the time is right for business to re-open,  we’ve been planning how we’ll bring people back into Maitland, particularly Maitland CBD.”


Image Credit: Lakes Mail