 who are here today from Cooperatives UK. We've got James Wright, who is our policy officer, and also we've got Emma Laycock, our head of governance and advice, and we'll start with James Wright, who will talk you through some of the government support, and please, as I say, ask some of your questions throughout. Thank you. Over to you, James. Okay, good afternoon, everybody. I'm just going to talk through the schemes that government is putting in place to help businesses cope with COVID-19. Just going to kind of talk through key factors, key features, sorry, eligibility, how to access the scheme, and also flag up some potential issues as well. Start by talking about the universally applicable schemes and then go on to talk about some of the schemes which have eligibility criteria by size, sector, etc. Some of the schemes are UK-wide. Devolution does also play a factor in this, and where it does, I'll mainly be talking about England, Scotland to a degree, Wales, but there's a degree of divergence between all parts of the United Kingdom. I would just take too long for me to go in with different variations for all four parts of the United Kingdom. I do apologise for those of you from Northern Ireland particularly, I think. Without further ado, I'm just going to go start going through some of the schemes starting with those which are universally applicable. First off is the job retention scheme, so this is open to all UK employers. Hello, James. We seem to have lost James. The ages of workers who would otherwise... We caught you back, James. Sorry, carry on. Right, where was I before you lost me? About a sentence ago. Right, okay. UK government's scheme offering to pay 80% of wages for employees who would otherwise be laid off because of COVID-19 up to £2,500 per worker. If you want more detailed information about how to access the scheme, the intricacies of the HR involved, I urge you to go on to our website, the HR advice pages. There's some really useful specialist HR advice on how to access the scheme. The main issue, I think, is that you might have to wait until the end of April before you actually get the reimbursements because the government is still working to actually put that in place. So whilst this is potentially quite significant support for your business, it's down the road and you may have to hang on to actually get to that support. But still, it's a huge scheme. Next up, I'm going to talk about the VAT deferral scheme. So again, this is open to any fact registered business. This is government allowing you to defer back payments for three months for a period from the 20th of March to the 30th of June this year. And you will have until the end of the next tax year to pay any back payments that would have been due in this period. All you have to do to make use of this scheme is not pay that in the period, but you obviously still have to remember to pay the VAT that was due at some point before the end of the next tax year. So whilst it could be useful in terms of deferral, it's not a holiday, you will still have to pay this VAT at some point, which will be something to bear in mind. But it's there. That's open to all back registered entities. The last scheme, which is universally applicable, is called time to pay. This is an existing scheme that HMRC operates with that they're just expanding to cope with what they expect to be greater demand. This is open to all tax paying entities. And this is essentially a service that allows you to negotiate and arrange with HMRC to take longer to pay taxes if you're struggling. HMRC is a dedicated line that you can ring to negotiate this. And there's more information again on this and everything else I'm talking about on our first pages. I would advise you to go and take a look at them. So that's the end of the schemes, which are universally applicable to all of you. Everything else I'm going to talk about has some kind of eligibility criteria attached to them. First off, statutory sick pay rebate. Now I would imagine that this would apply to the vast majority of businesses on this call. This is open to SMEs with fewer than 250 employees, or more particularly, SMEs that had fewer than 250 employees on the 28th of February. This is government giving you a rebate to cover the cost of two weeks of statutory sick pay for any COVID-19 sickness absence. Again, there's very good detailed advice on this on our HMR advice pages. If you want to understand more about how to access this scheme, that's where I suggest you go first off. Again, the main issue here is that this scheme is being developed, and you also have to wait a while before you actually get your rebate from government. Whilst again, this is potentially quite significant support for ongoing costs down the line, you have to survive long enough to get there. Next, I'm going to talk about the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme. This is really government's main finance package for business. That's certainly where they put most of the emphasis so far. This is open to all UK-based businesses with an annual turnover under 45 million pounds. You have to earn at least 50% of your revenue from trading in order to access this scheme. I know that might be an issue for some of our members, but for others it won't be. We have had assurances from government that as long as you meet that criteria in terms of being above 50% trading income, it doesn't matter whether you're a social enterprise, fully mutual, charitable, etc. As long as you meet that criteria, you should be able to access these loans. You will also need to be able to put in place a borrowing proposal, which demonstrates that were it not for COVID-19, you would be a viable business, and that borrowing proposal needs to demonstrate how you will use the loan, the trade, out of any short or medium-term difficulties you might be in. The substance of the offer from the business instructional loan scheme is interest-free loans for a period of 12 months, plus government guaranteeing 80% of the loan, and there's no arrangement fees and no early repayment fees. These are commercial loans. You have to apply to a group of accredited commercial lenders in order to access them. The first place I think you should go, if you want to consider this as an option, is the British Business Bank website. Again, if you go on our website, you'll find more information about all of this. James, just while you've paused there, would you be able to stop banging the keyboard if that's okay? Sorry. Thank you. The main issues with this scheme, there's a few I suppose. The first one, obviously, if your enterprise is less than 50% trading income, that's a problem. Coveted UK is one of a number of organisations which is lobbying government very hard at the moment for a separate support package for businesses which don't necessarily rely fully or wholly on trading income, but it might be part of it. We know there's a gap there in what government's currently providing. At the same time, debt finance might not be suitable for your co-op. There's pros and cons that need to be weighed up very carefully. You might need some expert advice and support to evaluate the different loan offers that are available and to develop a borrowing proposal. We know there are some hurdles and complexities that you would need to work through in order to access the loans that are being made available here. We also have some concerns that co-ops and I think community benefit societies in particular may have some issues in their dealing with some of the lenders in this scheme and that might make it harder to access support that you are actually eligible for. This is a perennial problem for co-op business societies in particular. We've raised this concern with the British Business Bank and have had some assurances that as long as a business is eligible according to their criteria they should be able to access it, but I think there might be an element of road testing in this. What I would say is if you try to access the business loan scheme, you think you're eligible and you run into problems with one of the lenders, please let us know as soon as possible because we can feed that back to government and try and get that fixed because we really need any business that is eligible for this scheme to be able to access it as smoothly as any other and we know that sometimes co-ops and societies in particular can run into problems in that regard. Next up I'm going to talk about the small business grant. This is a grant of £10,000 which the scheme is running in England and with some variations in Scotland and Wales as well. This is a one-off grant of £10,000 which will allow you to cover ongoing running costs. In England your local authority should be getting in touch with you if you're eligible for the grant. Sorry I should say that in order to be eligible for the grant you have to pay either small business rates, you either should receive small business rates relief or rural rates relief. That's the same with Scotland as well, things are slightly different in Wales. In England your local authority should be getting in touch with you to arrange the payment of this grant. In Scotland the process has not been finalised yet and obviously there are issues for enterprises which get charitable rate relief and we know that and again this is something that copies UK and a number of other organisations are currently lobbying very hard on to try and get something in place for businesses like yours. If you have any queries about the small business grant scheme you're not sure about eligibility or you think you are eligible but you don't hear from your local authority, I urge you to get in touch with your local authority as soon as possible. So lastly I'm going to go on to talk about schemes which are put in place specifically for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. There are two main measures being put in place here. One is a 100% business rates holiday and this is open to all retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England who pay business rates and they're very similar schemes in Scotland and Wales as well but they're not identical. You'll have to go on our website to look at what some of those differences are. Essentially what this is is you paying no business rates for the 2020-21 tax year on any properties which are mainly used for shops, restaurants, cafes, drinking establishment, cinema, live music venue, also for assembly and leisure. The eligibility for the property usage looks quite broad and based on the guidance that's been provided to local authorities, the government says that there's no action required of you if you're eligible. The local authority essentially won't be levying business rates for the coming year if you're eligible, you shouldn't have to do anything but if you're unsure and some of you might be unsure because what's written in black and white at Whitehall doesn't always necessarily look that clear to people on the ground. If you are unsure I urge you to get in touch with your local authority about this as soon as possible. I think one of the complicating issues here is that some local authorities will have already sent out their business rates bills for the coming tax year before this scheme was confirmed in which case they'll be having to resend bills to reflect the fact that there will be a business 100% business rates holder in place. If you get a bill, if you think you're eligible and you get a tax bill for the coming financial year, I'm not saying you don't pay your taxes but it might well be that you should be getting into your local authority to confirm that that was sent before this scheme was confirmed. So there may be some confusions there when you need to try and iron out. And lastly I'm going to talk about the retail and hospitality grant scheme. So this is again aimed specifically at retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England and it's operating after smaller premises. There are similar schemes in Scotland and Wales, not identical again. You'll have to go online, look at the slight variations. This is a £25,000 grant per property or a £10,000 grant per property depending on rateable value. In England, your local authority should be writing to you if you're eligible for these grants. If you're unsure whether you have property or properties are eligible again, I suggest that you get in touch with your local authority. Those are all the schemes that I wanted to talk about. There are some other schemes being developed in different parts of the United Kingdom to cover, for example, the third sector in Scotland. We just haven't got time to go into all of those right now. What I would say is these are huge brand new schemes from government that are being designed and implemented very, very quickly. And we know there will be problems. We need to know as soon as possible if things aren't working for the cooperative sector, both to inform the work that we're doing to develop complementary packages to plug gaps and also to feedback to government to try as much as possible to get them to finesse things in a way which works better for the cooperative sector as well. So please, as you're trying to access these schemes, let us know if there are any problems because we need to feed that back into the system. Okay, thanks, James. So I guess overall the idea is be very proactive about it. There are some points that are coming through which is Christopher Buckham saying we would be eligible for these schemes, but we've not yet heard anything back from the local authority. So again, I guess the idea is be proactive. And because we're in the cooperative sector, I would get in touch with them rather than wait, co-op community and finance, also looking at the business interruption scheme and whether we could be part of the scheme. But we're a small team and we need to consider this carefully. I don't know if you want any comments on that, James, while I look for other questions that have been asked. I mean, if CCF wanted to try and become an accredited lender, potentially that could be quite useful. I think we've had some queries already from co-ops looking at the list of accredited lenders in that scheme and thinking, well, these don't look like the kind of guys we normally go to for or finance. These aren't the types of businesses or lenders which understand the social economy. I get that whilst realistically, in theory, any co-op that meets the eligibility criteria should be able to go to any one of these lenders and it should work perfectly. We know in practice that's not the case. So if we can get more lenders into that accredited list for C bills, which do understand our sector, then that could be really good. Okay. And a couple of more questions that have been upvoted. So it is worth upvoting the questions that you see coming up. Joanna Chitty, are pressing co-op concern, is there any indication on what the position will be with the income relief for co-op directors? We are a five-person workers co-op registered as a company limited by guarantee. All five members are directors. All payments made to us are as employees. So at the moment, the support that government is putting place around protecting employees is the job retention scheme. Okay. In terms of saving jobs, that's the primary mechanism that they're putting in place. If that's not working for the worker directors or member directors, and that might be something we could look into, possibly we could take that offline because it sounds like it's slightly... On that, Gareth Nash saying that the job retention scheme will reimburse 80% of workers wage up to 2,500 per month, but workers have to be classified as furloughed? Not undertaken any work. I think there are cases from CDBs and others where the work has dropped and is less certain, but we are not furloughed. Thank you for that, Gareth. There was something that I just wanted before we go any further on CBSs. Also, before on that, do we know how it would work for zero hour contract employees who we have average earnings for? We don't know that at the moment. I would say the best place to go to start with these questions is our HR advice pages. They've been written by experts in HR as much as whenever there is currently to know about the job retention scheme and following workers, they will know it and that advice will be on our site. Okay. It was a niche area that's suddenly becoming a huge part of our economic model. So if you go to www.uk.coop and slash coronavirus, you'll see a whole raft of information there and specific HR information. We do have more questions. Keep up voting them, but before we go for any more questions, I'm going to try and launch a poll now. I actually do think that we can do the show of hands, so we'll come to that later as well. So we have a poll that we would like to get you looking at. I'm going to launch it now. So you should see a question on your screen. What are your main challenges and concerns right now? Can you choose your top three and let's just get a sense of all of you together, what you're all thinking about, and we can share that with each of us. Okay. We've got a number of issues coming in, making sense of government support and cash loan forecasting seem to be high up on the agenda. And those of you that are clicking the other, if you can put that into the Q&A section, that would help as well so we can find out what your issues are. As we say, some of the aims here today are to find out what your biggest challenges are and so that we can respond to those as we go. So I think we've come to the end of that poll and I'll share the results for everyone to see. So making sense of government support, 71%, obviously you could choose more than one, so this all doesn't amount to 100% across the board. Cash flow and forecasting, clearly very closely behind. Hoping with HR issues, communicating with stakeholders, and then there's a there's a lot of others and concerned about the supply chain disruption. So thank you for that. That's interesting for our panellists to consider as well. So we'll go straight over to Emma Laycock, as I say, the head of governance and advice, and she'll talk you through some of the support at Coats UK for at least talking about what support is out there. Thank you, Emma. Hi, thank you. Poll was interesting there in terms of the top things that are of interest to you. So hopefully after today, the HR support and the being able to access government support, or at least be able to understand a little bit more, you'll be able to go to our website and have a little bit more understanding of that. And also you'll be able to ask questions for today. Cash flow and forecasting, we know that there are real issues at the moment. I will come on to talk about that a little bit in a minute. But I'll I should say now we don't have any magic ones around that just yet. So in terms of what we've been doing at Coats UK, it's very much been around analysing and interpreting government advice. So hopefully makes it easy for you to understand the advice that's coming out there, how it might affect your co-op. We've also tried wherever possible to anticipate government announcements as well. In terms of the sorts of issues that we think may occur, we look ahead at what has happened in other countries in terms of government advice and try and anticipate some things that may happen here. The advice obviously up to this point has it started around governance advice. I would say those more immediate issues around how we hold our AGM. We were able to get some advice about that really quickly and also from the FCA and also a little bit more now from Companies House. And hopefully from the website you'll see that that becomes I would say less of an issue around what any expectations are from the FCA and Companies House. One of the biggest parts of the work that we've been doing has been around HR support which we provide anyway to members with the HR subscription. So we have a team of three that's been inundated with calls and request for information in terms of how all of the different governments announcements actually affect different employees. We've also obviously been having really difficult conversations with some co-ops in certain sectors, particularly around travel where again they were looking at really difficult decisions well before any of the government allowances came into play. So the HR support I do advise you to go and look on the website. There's a series there of frequently asked questions and then what you can also do there's a there's an email address on there in terms of membership at uk.coop. If you've got specific queries then we can't say that we can answer every single one of them but what we can do is reflect your questions in our frequently asked questions so that it may be more of a generic response but so that we can look and see all of the different issues that you're facing at the moment specifically around HR and we can reflect those on the website. We've also been making sure that our member comms are as up to date as possible that we're getting things out to co-ops as quickly as we can. We'll be doing more contacting co-ops or for you to contact us so that we can find out what the main issues are that you're facing so that we can then try and address some of those, see where we can sign posts as appropriate, look where we need to be lobbying government more and we need you to be making contact as well as us making contact with you so that we can really stay up to date with how you all are, what things are affecting you. There's also we've been working with our partners and our funders as well in terms of looking to see if there is any support for our members, co-ops and community benefit societies more widely. We've undertaken a review of all of our funded programs in terms of assessing the impact that that's had and we as I say have been very proactively engaged with our beneficiaries, our supporters and suppliers and our funders and funders are being very supportive, powder change, car bank and we're in talks with different funders and different partners. Just to see again we need information from you to know what it is that you need from us so that we can go to funders and partners to see if we can develop programs of support. One thing just to raise, we have secured support from the cooperative bank which sees a redirection of the Hive resources over 2020 and we launched Hive Assist at the end of last week so it's a new support offer for cooperative businesses specifically those experiencing difficulties at this time. So Hive Assist will operate on a referral system using the current Hive provider network so you'll know if you're a Hive provider and you will have had some contact from us if you're a co-op and you're interested in applying you can have a look on the website and it provides a list of those Hive providers that you can make contact with. So Hive Assist it won't provide funds, it won't provide cash but what it does provide is access to expert providers specifically around managing crisis effectively, how to remain viable and contingency support services so hopefully that can be something, there will be an application process that went live on Friday so that may be something that some of you can look to make contact with the Hive providers. As I say we're also speaking to Power to Change they have established a contingency support program already for their existing grant recipients, again you'll already know about this because you will have had contact from Power to Change already and we are in discussions with Power to Change and other funders as well in terms of as I say looking at a wider range of programs but hopefully we'll be able to tell you about in the coming weeks. But as I say it's very much around prioritizing work with our members, finding out from our members what their needs are, what we need to do to be able to try and assist you as much as we can, I can absolutely see that the advice that we provide will move away from governance and maybe a little bit of HR and very much move towards the signposting around government support and then also you know the support that we'll hopefully be able to access through funders and partners and certainly as I say we'll be very interested in your in your views on that in terms of what's required and certainly from the poll that's cash flow forecasting and I guess it's also to say we're not just going to be here in this kind of immediate crisis time, we'll also be looking to how we can support our members and costs more widely once the crisis becomes less immediate into that medium term which can be just as difficult to get through and then looking at whether there's you know requirements for restructuring or just just changing how you operate to make you more sustainable and into the future. So I wasn't going to say anything other than that Irina so I think we're going to open to questions, is that right? Yes, thank you. Okay there's fair, well there's a flurry of discussions, thank you everyone for participating, keep them coming. Some of those who were participating in the poll, the others that people were signifying was about a complete income loss, somebody saying here demand has just disappeared along with all income, that wasn't an option on the poll but that's part of what the other is that we need to know from you. Also there are some interesting points that are coming through, thank you to all of those that are aware very clearly some of the things that are affecting you and they can share with others. So for example the grants the one-off grants of 10,000 k that many small co-ops may be eligible for regardless of whether or not they are their business is effective negatively by the virus and its restrictions. The government has acknowledged that many of the grants and credit lines they will make available will be inaccurately targeted. As a movement we could act as a targeting agent for example we could call on all co-ops who do not expect to be significantly negatively affected to donate their grants to a fund like Solid Fund which then redistributes these grants based on needs to co-ops who are disproportionately affected. This is the kind of thing that we expected which is positivity and also support immediately from the co-op movement so we're unique in that, thank you for those comments. So some of the upvoted questions coming through again when you see a question and you see the thumb next to it click that so that we can get that right to the top. If we have sufficient reserves to keep our staff on full pay for at least three months does that disqualify us from the 80% job retention offer maybe that's for you James? It's for the HR advice team I would say in the terms of the detail of following workers. Okay I think I can say I think you are still eligible even if you do have reserves but definitely that's something that we can put to our HR team and perhaps that's a difficult to ask questions. Okay about community benefit societies and social enterprises so how to ensure that community benefit societies are eligible where appropriate for what's being made available to both businesses and the charitable sector. We are getting a few in this area where some are either social enterprises don't pay business rates maybe in the charitable sector also community benefit society related as well so how do they find out whether they're eligible? I mean it depends on which scheme you're talking about and the first place to go would be our advice page lists all the government schemes need to know very clearly what the eligibility criteria are for different ones and as you say some of if for example the small business grant scheme eligibility relies on paying for business rates relief or rural rate reliefs if you get charitable rate relief you won't get it for example that's all details on our website and that not all of the schemes are necessarily targeted in terms of being charities social enterprise etc and it really depends on which scheme you're talking about you need to go on the website. Many of us want to know what is being pushed for businesses that don't operate out of our out of a rateable property that's the same sort of thing. Well yeah it's there are a lot of people talking about that at the moment government knows that it hasn't necessarily cracked this yet you know it's three times it's come back with new stuff and three times there's been you know shock about the scale of their intervention and then every time they've had to go away and rethink and come back with more they will come back with more schemes that there's no way that this is this is the end of what they're doing we know that they're already looking at stuff around support for the social economy charitable sector that type of thing there's a huge amount of pressure on them to do things for freelancers and the self-employed that might well expand to looking at businesses which don't operate out of a rateable property as well as they're they're well aware they haven't cracked yet. Are housing co-ops eligible for the business interruption loan scheme? That is a good question I don't know it would depend on whether or not they count as receiving 150% of their revenue from trading income it's I mean I think that would be normally you would say that they wouldn't because normally when people talk about trading income they would tend to exclude rents from that but this is this is new territory so we don't know do they they feel that they need it at the moment or? So does the coronavirus oh sorry I think we may have answered this does the job retention scheme apply to both salary and hourly paid employees? Salaryed and hourly pay it applies to employees. Okay um leisure organization they rent their property from a charity therefore we don't pay any business rates there seems to be a lot of those things coming through that we're not eligible in those areas so how can they ensure that they're eligible for other grants um again because there's a lot on that we'll probably be able to disseminate this offline and then get back to everyone with an FAQ perhaps a some kind of resource where we'll be able to answer that more folly um how to deal again how to deal with landlords there's difficulty contacting the city council um could Hive provide marketing support for co-ops after the outbreak has finished? um I guess that's some you know in terms of Hive providers if they're working with particular groups where um you know once the the crisis is over they're looking at how to make organizations more resilient then I guess marketing could be part of that plan I think it would just become uh something the Hive program is uh reasonably flexible in terms of the advice that it can provide and I think certainly with the Hive Assist it's less known at the minute what it's going to cover I think the expectation at the moment obviously is that it's going to be dealing with those more immediate issues but I think certainly um part of it is very much around ensuring um that viable well businesses that were viable before the crisis can continue to be viable after it so I'm not saying yes for deafener because I don't run that program but I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to do that and um are you open to other Hive providers new Hive providers um that's one that I will need to check um as as far as I'm aware that's something that there's kind of a round done every now and again for new Hive providers to join it may well be though that there are skills and knowledge that we need or that co-ops need that perhaps can't be provided by the current Hive providers and so at that point it will be it may well be possible that we might open up to to new providers I guess that will be linked to the kinds of queries and inquiries that that we get as to whether or not you know depending on on what the the guidance is or the help is that co-ops need yeah um more about tenants um let's have a look is there advice to cbs boards on the areas and decisions they should be considered taking to show good governance and a clear trial of decision-making could this include measures taken to employees um we had a COVID-19 response meeting but now wondering if we need formal board resolutions on some of the key decisions we're making um I would say yes in time I think certainly around some of the decisions that will be that will have needed to have been taken in quite short measure I think it's understandable if those sorts of decisions haven't been minuted and maybe haven't been done in meetings and so on and I think that's okay um certainly my view is not that governance takes a backseat but there are times when you need to be just making sure that your business is viable I think in terms of good governance practice then yeah absolutely directors or members of boards of co-ops and community benefit societies really the thing that you should be concentrating on the most is risk and so you need to be looking at the risks associated with the decisions that you're taking um and yes sometimes absolutely you may need a board resolution um in order to to make some of those decisions what you can also do which I know some organizations have done as they've set up subcommittees that are specifically there to deal with um issues around uh COVID-19 which means that they can have delegated powers from the board which stops even having to call board meetings for every decision that needs to be taken but also then enables you to make decisions quickly um as you need to think what you need to be doing in terms of governance is what hopefully most of you do anyway and it's absolutely about scanning what's on the horizon what's happening right now um and in making the decisions that are right for your for your business for your members and for your employees um and some as I say it's always evaluating um the risk um certainly the guidance that we've put out we're not advocating that we breach your rule that you breach your rules but we recognize that in situations like this sometimes that is what you need to do to enable you to do the right thing for for the business and again you can get in contact with us if you've got any specific any specific questions and we can we can look to add those onto the website or or to get back to you if there's anything that's that's not generic um again some answers to the other in the poll and we're an acting co-op agency not knowing when the industry will start back up again is obviously one of our main concerns um another one was cash flow and reforecasting somebody asking for a webinar just on cash flow business reforecasting um we do have webinars um planned later in the year we may look at bringing those forward we will look at that um so thank you for that we have lost 75 75 percent of our income can we partially furlough some of our staff or is it all or nothing we're a bencom on the booster program um Emma are you going to I was going to say we we've already had that question and so in terms of the furloughing of staff I think that's just a question that we can ask the HR team I'm 90 percent sure that it's all or nothing I don't think it's partial furlough but I don't know that for sure so we need to we need to check that for you um I've actually forgotten what the rest of the question was sorry um I think you've answered it it was whether it was all or nothing they um did they stand down all of their staff or just um and they still apply if they've not stood down all of their staff I think was the question yeah let me um we can check that and I can't see that that specifically is currently on the website in the frequently asked questions so we can ask for that to be looked at and updated okay um others finding that dealing with the local authority when they are themselves stretched at a crisis um they've not been very good at communicating or collaborating I think that seems to be a common um experience with some of our attendees here um not a lot of traction but there is an amendment in the coronavirus bill which would should uplift sole traders to a similar level of support as employees applicable to many co-op consortia as well thank you Mark for that um again in response to James question on housing co-ops and needing access to the business interruption loan um housing coats may need a loan if their tenants can't pay rent some younger housing coats will be in more trouble than mature ones and I think your answer James was that it was all about whether you're a trading organisation and if 50% of your trading is um if you're trading more than 50% of your revenue then you're viable so it's again it's it's in the grey area that housing if you're not a trader yeah I could I could go to the British business bank and ask a question on that because normally when people talk about um trading income and earning revenue from commercial practices it gets interpreted in different ways depending on who's looking at it whether it's an attack policy that type of thing it's sometimes things like property rental income falls outside of that whether it will in this case I don't know so I can ask the British business bank for information on that thank you so a few housing co-ops online today um if we keep a minimal income coming in by switching from a real shop to an online home delivery shop will this disqualify us from the job retention and small business grants that we get in specific um scenarios here well I mean the small business grant that's open to any small business that pays small business rates relief the only eligibility is that you have to pay small business the only eligibility is that you have small business rates relief or rural rate relief that's what someone would say before it's not necessarily targeted at need at the moment so in some ways that 10,000 pound grant comes as long as you meet those pretty basic eligibility regardless of whether you're an online business or if you're currently receiving that small business rates relief then at the moment I just want to understand that you can get the grant but if that if you change I suppose it depends when you change I think in terms of moving to an offline business I'm not sure I can ask that question as well um again a lot about furlough and unfurlough if we spend time seeking business and future projects developing resources we have lost all of our present work will we not count as furloughed and can we furlough staff and then unfurlough and possibly refurlough to manage demand again this is this is all pretty technical HR advice around the intricacies of furloughing the first port of call would have to be um our HR advice pages I think okay and while we're waiting for more um upvoted questions let's just um similar SM are there sectors where co-ops and social enterprises doing well and registering job growth like consumer co-ops during these times are the nature of jobs where there is growing demanding co-ops and social enterprises more likely to be online I don't know if any of the attendees could answer that in the chat but a lot of you seem to be interested in that as we I think where I'm hoping that we can actually do this um hands up show of hands um because I think we're interested more in what people are experiencing here on the um calls so if if you can see a hand uh function I'm hoping this works so again the question really was there were a number of questions that we wanted to um just ask in the um initial stages which was during this current crisis are you experiencing an upsurge and uptake in business and revenue if you have got that we'll ask the other questions soon but if you have got an uptake in business it will be interesting to know that show of hands if you're experiencing an uptake in business and revenue I can see their hands coming up now thank you Irina just while you're doing that can I just say um I've asked the HR team about partial furloughing at you can't it has to be the full job if you're going to furlough an employee thank you okay so not many of you experiencing um an uptake in business at this time um can we find out how many of you experience a drop in business at this time show of hands please unsurprisingly this is rocketing through the roof and if that's still going a show of hands um if that's still going sorry while there's people online if you're experiencing a drop in business can you keep your hand up if you're in the hospitality uh events venue sector okay about half of those who voted there's about 90 or four of you online about 30 of you are experiencing a severe drop in business um how many of you think it's too soon for you to say at the moment show of hands on all of those who think it's too soon for you to say what you're experiencing there is obviously so much information going out there there's a little bit of siege mentality that can be happening as well so who thinks it's too soon to say about 16 of you from 90 participants and um and anybody online that this doesn't really apply to you you're just interested in all of the information that's out there the show of hands okay that's interesting about 10 few more so that's interesting to know the breakdown of some of our attendees let me just see if there are any more questions please do ask more things if you're interested in um our team's responses let me just see if there's any more will high support be available in wales yes yes thank you for that now i think it's probably time then because we've got some interest in switching from their existing business into maybe online business or just being adaptable and agile enough so um there are some people that are in the chat if you're wondering how to perhaps turn your online your retail business or your food business into an online business then the open food network is supporting food producers and community food enterprises to set up online ordering and home delivery services please see that in the link in the chat and the link is there from nick way thank you for that nick um again as a movement this is how we support each other and we're wanting to find out much more how we can help um across the sectors um acting co-ops are usually not for profit organizations relying on commission we take from bookings and our actors paid work to pay for rent and bills as we are all now out of work we're relying on what is currently in the bank to pay our quarterly rent i think you're um experiencing what many are at this time especially self-employed agency workers and uh we have a few acting co-ops as well online um would you a stock take on the 31st of march can we postpone this i guess it's really relevant to would you an AGM soon would you other things that were in the pipeline soon can they postpone what was in their planning sorry in terms of an AGM or a stock take quite i guess you need to take decisions that are right for your business at the time and certainly sort of around member meetings and AGMs and things like that you may wish to postpone them it's it's more um or find different ways to do meetings so you operate them virtually and so on in terms of a in terms of a stock take i'm really not sure i guess um yeah you need to make the right decisions for your business as it is um right now i i don't know james if you've got anything else to add on that but no um we had to shut down our business for two weeks because of a suspected case from a worker does um the support relate to all people all people in self-isolation or just those workers when applying for the ssp signote from the nhs it doesn't have an option for my co-workers this um the symptoms just my housemate hmm okay so more on the housing side there there are details in on the the website around statutory sick pay when it kicks in who is applicable for so i would advise you to go and have a look on there and see on the frequently asked questions and see if that actually helps you with your question and if not then maybe get back to us and that we can we can have a more um a closer look okay thank you for all of your questions obviously there's a few more that we haven't managed to to get to um but we hope to as we say to create a resource out of this it will be recorded um and you will be able to see it again um in terms of any of the positive stories that we've heard coming through in the past few days um james emma do you know of any that you want to be able to share and as emma and james are talking again those online if you want to share some of the things that you're doing or hearing uh please let us know um i suppose no go on james you go first i suppose um i was on the call yesterday where there was quite a lot of talk about how um the retail societies uh coq group but obviously some of the others are really um trying to use their links within their communities and their volunteers and their member networks etc to really get involved in the community response around this so at the same time as you know making sure that the showers are stacked and that we're all fed they're also doing using their extra and waiters as cofted businesses with you know thousands of members to get involved in the community response as well and i think you know that is that is really great yeah i was going to say the same thing in my line of work i tend to hear the bad things rather than the positive things but yeah that's definitely one in terms of working in communities and um you know yeah that kind of those sort of stories are always they're always good to hear and always really prevalent in the community okay we have um as well in the co-op movement we have a whole list of um suppliers providers as well that will share with people on who are very very kind of keen on networking at this time and the online on the open credit network as well that's very key in terms of trading with each other having a line of credit with them but still being able to trade with each other as co-ops and so that is worth looking at um there are other um stories we've heard from um food outlets cafe outlets and some are going on to crowdfunding platforms and wanting to help feed a whole bunch of people in their local area because of um what's been happening so again they're crowdfunding for that resource and the cafe will be delivering um to people and necessary food so there are things that are happening crowdfunding seems to be uh a quick access um your members and asking for their support that is also a way to um access health and support in a immediate term um so we are hearing some good news stories coming through if there are any others please do share them with us um at co-ops u k so that we can encourage each other at this time and we really want to hear much more from you in terms of um the information that we'll be having to field and also um lobbying government for that's our remit we want to make sure that we understand from our members the things that are um of huge interest and concern to you so please keep those coming you can send all of those details to us post webinar as well at membership at uk.coop so membership at uk.coop and gareth and i will be building those questions and again coming back to you with any information that's um becoming available to us the website is packed full as emma and james were saying it's been disseminated by our um experts in co-ops uk along with our team here and it is absolutely packed full with information for hr legal um governance issues so please take a look at that first there's a whole raft of frequently asked questions from you so take a look at that we'll share as much as we can after the webinar if you are interested in a recording um let me know and we'll also be sending a link out to all of you to get your feedback on this because we will be probably coming up with more webinars our entire co-op connections free event um tour has now become an online venture so we're going to be talking much more about these issues on a regional basis so please look out for those in your region they will be all on our website look out for the co-op connections list of events and you'll be able to then network much more closely with those who are closer to you in your region so we encourage you to be part of the co-op connections network and find out more about these issues as they come up so thank you to emma and james thank you for your support information thanks to everyone who's joined us um please keep sharing with us your information and with each other and let us know much more about what we should be doing and what we can be doing much more at this time and stay safe everybody thank you very much and we look forward to having another webinar with you soon thank you thank you bye bye bye everyone