For those of you with the excellent taste to be based in the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership area (basically the bit between Oxford - Cambridge and St Albans - Leicester, but excluding those towns), SEMLEP’s Growth Hub is launching a new capital grants package to support local businesses, called the Recovery and Resilience Grants Scheme.
The scheme was announced to businesses today - Thursday 10th December - during the Building Resilience for 2021 webinar, with a newsletter following.
Further details, including the eligibility criteria, application process, and deadlines can now be found on the webpage.
About the grants
The Recovery and Resilience Grant scheme offers match funding to businesses to invest in new technologies, plant equipment or machinery, or fund land or premises growth to help businesses create employment opportunities.
The grants of between £5,000 to £50,000 are designed to build business resilience by supporting investment projects that will create a significant, positive impact on the business’ future. Grants of up to £50,000 for capital equipment will be available – they can fund up to 50% of project costs and anticipate most grants will be in the region of £25,000. .
Who can apply?
To be eligible for grant funding, applicants must meet the following criteria:
Be an SME (employ less than 250 people and your turnover is less than EUR 50m or annual balance sheet less than EUR 43m).
Be a trading enterprise (and have at least 1 years’ worth of accounts).
Be registered in the UK and have a base in the South East Midlands / SEMLEP area.
Be ready to invest or expand in the local area (fundamentally: create new jobs, take new business space, create valuable IPR for the UK, and specific rules will apply).
Must not have been a company ‘in difficulty’ on 31 December 2019.
Please note, grants will be awarded on a discretionary basis and will be subject to eligibility checks and approval.
Why apply?
Applying for small grants like this has a really strong ROI for small technology enabled companies. Think of it as one more employee for 6 months or some vital equipment that comes free. Well, not quite free: you have to apply and you have to complete some post funding reporting and monitoring, and that has real costs attached, but nearly free.
How can I help?
I have a conflict of interest here: I am a board director at SEMLEP, so cannot actively participate. I am, however, allowed to signpost you to people who can help and encourage you to apply properly and promptly.
So, as the COVID and Brexit double-hump looms into view in the cash flows and funding strategy of hundreds of small companies in the region, I would be very happy to have exactly those conversations as soon as possible.