Chancellor Rishi Sunak is announcing extra support for the hospitality and leisure sectors in England in the run-up to Christmas.
One-off grants of up to £6,000 per premises for businesses in these sectors are being made available.
About 200,000 businesses will be eligible for business grants, which will be administered by local authorities and will be available in the coming weeks, the Treasury says.
It says they are equivalent to the monthly cash grants provided to hospitality businesses when they were fully closed earlier this year.
To support other businesses impacted by Omicron – such as those who supply the hospitality and leisure sectors – the government is also giving more than £100 million boost to the additional restrictions grant fund for local authorities in England.
The Treasury says £1bn of support is being provided in total.
This is made up of:
£683 million for grants for hospitality and leisure businesses in England
£102 million top-up for the additional restrictions grant for local authorities to support other businesses
An additional £30m for the cultural recovery fund to support theatres and museums
A statutory sick pay rebate scheme, so SMEs can recover costs for sick employees
And £154 million of Barnett funding
Shevaun Haviland, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “These measures will provide some welcome respite to many of those businesses who have been hit hardest by the latest Covid measures.
“The Chancellor and his team have engaged with us in talks over the past week, considered the experiences of Chamber business communities and the proposals we put to them.
“We are pleased that the Chancellor heard our call for additional grant funding for hospitality and leisure businesses, which will provide some much-needed support in the face of this increasingly difficult trading period. Clarity and speed will be needed to ensure that these grants are paid out swiftly to help these hard-pressed firms weather the next few weeks.
“Whilst these measures are a positive starting point, if restrictions persist or are tightened further, then we would need to see a wider support package, equal to the scale of any new measures, put in place.