Directors Income Support Scheme (DISS) – an update from the partners

News 16 Mar 2021

FSB and our partners came together last year, to propose a Directors’ Income Support Scheme (DISS). We will continue to campaign and engage with government around proposals to Government to get support for those who so desperately need it, including limited company directors.

We are pleased to see progress in grant application systems in Northern Ireland and Lincolnshire for those affected, which will be a lifeline for those businesses lucky to be based in those areas, and we hope others will follow their lead. 

However, the grants are only in a small number of areas, have completely different criteria, require huge amount of resources to administer, and cover different groups of those left out. They are not as cohesive, robust or comprehensive as a scheme like the DISS, run for all through the HMRC tax system.

Over five months, DISS partners had detailed engagement with businesses affected in the community, with other business groups and trade unions, with Parliament, and with HM Treasury, HMRC and other government departments. Our aim has been simple; to bring directors their fair share of support in the global pandemic, overcoming the barriers and issues raised such as issues around dividends from work as opposed to passive investment. The DISS achieved this aim. It is a thoughtful, elegant solution using data held or accessible by HMRC.

We know that the DISS proposal had real impact; it was received well across the community, and across all parties in Parliament. We are deeply grateful for those who supported the proposals - every single endorsement mattered. We know it was then considered at length by Treasury Ministers and officials in both the Treasury and HMRC, with whom we have had detailed and lengthy discussions. These continued right up until the eve of the Spring Budget.

We are therefore of course disappointed that there was no mention of support for directors in the Spring Budget, either through the DISS or otherwise. We see the impact such news has had in the community, and many want to know if this is the end of the DISS, or the end of any hope for support. The decision on this rests firmly in the hands of Ministers, not us. We still believe the DISS would work, but from our shared perspective, we also believe the Spring Budget was the most likely moment for us to secure progress on the DISS. It would be wrong to our members and supporters to pretend that we feel the DISS is likely to be adopted, in full, any time soon.

There remain lots of options open for Government to provide support for this group, to devise workable and secure ways to help drive the recovery, and the broader agenda of job creation, growth and levelling up our local communities. Directors of small limited companies must be at the heart of all this, and we will make the case. We put everything we had into getting the DISS adopted, but now our efforts will be to find new ways to get help those affected. Directors should therefore explore all options that may be open to them, keep talking to others affected and know they are not alone, and to get through what we hope will be the final stages of the crisis.

Rebecca Seeley Harris
Gina Broadhurst, Forgotten Ltd
Glenn Collins, ACCA
Craig Beaumont, FSB