Cornwall Council has urged the government to allow it to provide additional funding to help self-employed people in Cornwall.

The authority has been given £13.5million, which can be handed out in discretionary grants to businesses which were not eligible for earlier funding provided by the government.

Cornwall Council has handed out more than £200m from the government to companies which have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

However a number of businesses in Cornwall did not fit the criteria set by the government which led to the new funding announced last week.

That initially was not available for the self-employed but the government decided that the would now be eligible.

However Cornwall Council says that the needs of the self-employed will require additional funding. As a result the council is calling for the government to allow any money underspent in the earlier schemes be allowed to be allocated to people applying to the new scheme.

Tim Dwelly, Cornwall Council Cabinet member for economy and planning, said: “We were surprised but delighted when the government backed down on its refusal to allow self-employed people to claim these grants late on Friday night.

“The good news is that will help Cornwall particularly where we have a very high level of self-employment. The problem is the government has so far only allowed us £13.5million for this scheme.

“By allowing self-employed people to apply the numbers have shot up and we have already had more than 2,000 applications. This means that we will certainly need government, if it wants to help us support Cornish businesses fully, to allow us to use some of the original grant scheme underspend which would be easily enough for us to give all those that need a grant the support they deserve.

“I urge MPs in Cornwall to lobby for this and help us to get the money to Cornish businesses that really need it rather than send that money back to Whitehall.”