A FAMILY owned country estate that organise events as well as camping weekends are raising awareness for the problems small businesses are facing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Kate Glen-Donald owns Blaithwaite House with her husband Malcolm Donald, they were forced to close their business last month after the virus hit.

But since then they've been finding it hard to get any help for the disruption caused to their business. Mrs Glen-Donald explained: "Our insurance don't cover us and don't fall into the category for the council grant that is going out to all small business. Just because we are quite big in square footage doesn't necessarily equate to being big in income and funds.

"We are pushing the government for more clarification to see if there are grant we can apply for. We are trying to raise awareness for the problems small businesses are forcing."

The couple are hoping this will be an short term issue as they've applied for a loan with the Cumberland Building Society, however, this has been delayed because of coronavirus.

Mrs Glen-Donald added: "Once we do get this load through from the Cumberland we do have projects set to go, but that could be three months.

"But in that 12 weeks, we still have to pay our bills, pay staff, pay the furlough scheme, we still have to pay that before we can claim it back.

"We may even end up paying a couple of months worth of wages before we get the ability to claim it back from the government.

"We are facing a really hard challenge, but after that 12 weeks and when the country starts to get back to some sort of normality we hope that people will want to come back out and holiday in this country and support local.

"We feel like the government are pledging all this help which is fantastic and many businesses will be able to access it but there are so many that are in our position situation where we can't access the help.

"We are closed, there is nothing coming in."