Council has implemented a number of support measures to help alleviate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on local businesses and the community.
These measures include:
Financial Support – Paying your Council Bills
If you need support in regards to your Council bills, please refer to our
Rates, Charges and Fees - Financial Hardship Policy.
- Applications under this policy are required to be made in writing or emailed to
coffs.council@chcc.nsw.gov.au
- Applications under this policy (for rates and water bills) must be made by the property owner or part owner of the property.
For more information and advice please call our Customer Service Centre on 02 6648 4000 during business hours.
Other Financial Support
- Suspending new debt recovery actions for outstanding accounts where financial hardship is evident.
- Removing account keeping fees, reminder fees and credit card surcharges.
- Providing loan repayment relief for existing Council loans to community groups.
- Providing rent relief through rent abatement to either lease or licence agreements of Council owned or managed property for the period 1 October 2020 to 31 March 2021. Tenants have been invited to submit their business case and application for consideration should they have been impacted by Covid-19 restrictions.
- Deferring the 2020/2021 Special Rate for city centre businesses and associated infrastructure works to the same value.
- The State Government has instructed all NSW Council's – that no interest charges should be applied to outstanding land rates from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2020.
Community Assistance Grants
- A $50,000 temporary grant program to help fund activities to enhance community wellbeing in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, opens 12 October 2020 - find out more.
Other Measures
- Undertaking street parking patrols and issuing formal warnings to first time offenders for parking overstays in lieu of a fine as a means to support local businesses.
- Assisting food business to understand and meet their COVID-19 Safe obligations.
- Encouraging everyone to buy local and support local business #buylocal #supportlocal
COVID-19 Recovery Plan is also being developed for the whole Coffs Harbour community which will focus on broad business and organisation recovery across multiple sectors that will augment available Federal and State Government programs and strong advocacy with other levels of government.
