This information has been updated, please see our latest blog here.

On 24 September, Rishi Sunak announced a raft of extended business support measures, including a new Job Support Scheme, extended tax deferrals, greater flexibility within the COVID loan schemes and, a further extension to the Self Employed Income Support Scheme  (SEISS).

The extended SEISS will provide two additional grant payments covering two three-month periods, November 2020 to January 2021 and February 2021 to April 2021. Each grant payment will cover 20% of average monthly trading profits, capped at £1,875. This is down from 80% and 70% respectively for the first two SEISS grant payments paid out earlier this year.

As before, to claim you need to be eligible for the scheme, but do not need to have claim under the scheme in the previous periods. One of the main conditions is that you are impacted by reduced demand due to coronavirus in the qualifying period (the qualifying period for the grant extension is between 1 November and the date of claim). You will also need to declare that you are currently actively trading and intend to continue to trade.

The exact date HMRC will provide such grants is not yet known and HMRC will provide full details about claiming and applications in guidance on GOV.UK in due course.