Groomers’ Funding Battle Continues
Groomer and support group organiser Sarah Colquitt of The Groomers Kennel (TGK) & Puss ‘N’ Pooch Salon, shares an update on the battle for funding as groomers’ plights still remains largely unheard by the masses:
T
he more members we gather, the more we can try to help and by supporting each other and sharing our individual battles with different Councils our knowledge expands which gives us more peoplepower to fight as a collective. Groomers are not alone, a unity has now formed, in an industry where there was little of it before. When TGK launched on the 11th of January 2021 our fight was regarding the Local Restrictions Support Grant – LRSG (CLOSED) Grant - but this was only for salons with rateable premises and as we wanted to include all groomers, we soon learned more about the ARG Additional Restrictions/
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Discretionary Grant to assist all the home-based and mobile groomers too. At the time of writing the last article we had managed to convince 94 Councils into awarding the LRSG Grant to groomers and we were going strong, whilst also advising on how to handle the process for the ARG’s and what to expect Councils to request during the application. What soon became clear is this varies greatly similarly to the LRSG. Homebased and mobile groomers were being put through an obstacle course to receive the ARG. We found ourselves joking that some Councils wanted to know your inside-leg and bra-size, whilst others simply asked for three
months’ worth of bank statements. The differences in approach and attitude from Councils became even more apparent, along with the incompetency displayed too. Many discrepancies were coming to light, such as some were demanding applications signed off by Chartered Accountants with a Pro-Forma, others were claiming the ARG was only for Limited Companies, and a few stated it wasn’t available for domestic premises, the variety of responses was quite shocking. Many Councils are uncontactable and applicants were told to not contact them for six weeks, whilst others were paying out grants within a couple
