COVID-19 Update #8

Posted May 18, 2020
IHNZ News

The Government has announced a 4 year plan of $265 million, with the first tranche of $83 million being made available in the next financial year (1 July 2020 - 30 June 2021) for the Play, Active Recreation and Sport sector.

These funds have been broadly categorised as follows:

Phase 1 - Reset and Rebuild - $83 million 
These funds are to be used to get sport and recreation up and running in the first instance. The Community and Performance Resilience Funds are included in this amount.

Phase 2 - Strengthening and Adapting - $104 million
A consultation process will take place (over the last 6 months of 2020) with sport and recreation organisations.

Phase 3 - Different and Better - $78 million
This provides the opportunity to redefine the sector and ensure it is exploring new ways to future proof the sport and plan for other eventualities.

Sport NZ is meeting with the Sports Minister toward the end of this week with the objective to provide more clarity around these stages.

Community Resilience Fund:
With some 40,000 clubs across the country, the Community Resilience Fund is being well utilised. We encourage applications to be submitted whilst funds are available.

Gaming/Lotteries Funding:
The Gaming and Lotteries Commission have been working with Internal Affairs on a relief package and have drafted a cabinet paper that is being presented to the Government late this week. The paper focuses on relief strategies and the best way to move forward with the capital they have.

Currently they foresee a 6 - 8 week period of reasonable trading being needed before they could look to funding. At present they are looking to June start so the very earliest any grants and funding could be looked at would be late August/ early September.

This timeframe would obviously change if there is movement across the levels again leading into another lockdown.

Council Facilities:
Councils are working through a staged approach to opening their venues with outdoor recreation space, gyms, OSCAR programmes and childcare being the first to operate.

Council run pools and sport fields remain closed in some areas (this is mainly due to water restrictions). Indoor recreation spaces are still being worked through in various areas and a timeframe being added to an opening date.

Sport NZ:
As previously advised, the 10 person gathering limit does apply to all community sport and this limit will be reviewed on 25 May. At this point, subject to New Zealand’s continued containment of COVID-19, the limits may be increased which could enable full training and competition environments to restart.

Sport NZ are hopeful by early June they will have more answers and able to roll out some winter sport. Their approach is slowly, slowly as they do not want sport to be the reason for a jump to a higher alert level.

Other Important Information - Small Business Cashflow Scheme:
Government has introduced the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme to support businesses and organisations struggling because of loss of revenue as a result of COVID-19. The eligibility criteria has been announced.
https://www.ird.govt.nz/covid-19/business-and-organisations/small-business-cash-flow-loan?mc_cid=a39e21e2bc&mc_eid=347c797b50

The key points are:

• Your business or organisation must have 50 or fewer full time equivalent employees and be eligible for the Wage Subsidy Scheme. 
• You must have an ongoing  viable business plan and be able to to verify this. 

Applications are open from 12 May 2020 up to 12 June 2020.

Funds will be received within five working days and IRD will administer the payments. The loan has a five year term and must be repaid by 31 July 2025. The annual interest rate is 3% but will not be charged if the loan is repaid within one year. In most cases businesses will be able to borrow $10,000 plus $1,800 per full time equivalent employee to a maximum of $100,000.

Oceanias Update:
We are still awaiting a final response from the Insurance company, Airlines and Hotel in regards to Oceanias. As soon as we have a final outcome we will advise. Thanks to everyone for their patience to date in what has been a drawn out process due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Communication:
We will continue to develop our guidelines and have these out as soon as possible.

Any questions or queries please forward to gm@inlinehockeynz.org.nz.

Stay safe all,
Regards
IHNZ Board