Stafford Borough Council has launched a fund to help support small to medium businesses (SMEs), that are located within Stafford Borough. This fund is open to those businesses where a minimum of 75% of the business income is from sales to other businesses.
Applications are open until 31 December 2024 subject to funding still being available.
A limited fund of £200,000 is available. You can contact a member of the Business Growth Team at Stafford Borough Council about your application: email economy@staffordbc.gov.uk or telephone 01785 619584.
Grants of between £10,000 and £25,000 will be available to support businesses across Stafford areas who have plans to develop new products and services. A match fund of 20% will be required.
A technology or process is new to the firm if it did not use a technology or process with the same functionality before, or the production technology or process is fundamentally different from those already used.
A product or service is new if the business has not previously made this product or service available to the market before.
Applications are invited from businesses operating in the following sectors:
- Manufacturing
- Wholesale
- Construction
- Logistics, storage, transport
- Professional, scientific and technical services
- Information and communication
- Agriculture, forestry and fishing
- Other business to business service and product providers will be considered
Examples of eligible expenditure:
- Website design
- Marketing materials for new product or service
- Specialist advice on new product design, financial, planning
- Capital equipment
- Advertising, PR, publicity to launch new product or service
- Recruitment, training and skills to support development
- A one off £2000 apprenticeship grant
- Costs associated with taking on additional business space to allow for increased productivity including refurbishments and extensions
- Digital projects
To qualify for funding please note:
- Your business must be registered at Companies House and actively trading.
- Two full sets of recent certified trading accounts or management accounts are required.
- 75% of your business income must be generated from selling directly to other businesses.
- You must employ less than 250 full-time equivalent persons.
- You must have an annual turnover of less than £40 million.
- You must not have already received a grant under UKSPF/REPF direct from Stafford Borough Council.
- You must not have already purchased or placed an order for the service/product.
- Your project must be completed before 31 December 2024.
- You must not have received more than £315,000 of public subsidies within the current financial year and previous two full financial years collectively. A financial year is from 1 April to 31 March.
Application Process
Funding will not automatically be offered. All applications will be carefully assessed and those that meet with the government UKSPF interventions and the boroughs local economy needs will be considered.
Documents required to support full application
- Completed Application form
- Two full sets of recent certified trading accounts or management accounts
- Bank statement clearly showing name of bank, account name, number and sort code
- Planning permission notification if appropriate
- For items between £2,499 and £24,999, three quotes are required from different suppliers. This value could be for one item or the sum of many items from one supplier.
- A tender process will need to be in put in place for values of £25,000 or more.
(Quotes/tenders should not be from people or businesses connected to your business, directors or shareholders)
Payment of grant
- Eligible businesses will be expected to fund 100% of the costs upfront
- Grants will be paid in arrears
- The eligible grant amount will be reimbursed on production of receipted invoices/evidence of payment from a business bank account and evidence of delivery/completion of the project
- Grant payments will be made in a single payment
- Expenditure incurred prior to the date of the fully signed funding agreement, will be ineligible for consideration.
- Any expenditure committed or incurred prior to accepting and signing a Grant Funding Agreement is entirely at the applicant’s own risk
- Applicants must not have received more than £315,000 in public subsidies in the current and previous two financial years (financial year being 1 April to 31 March
- Grant awards must be claimed within 3 months of the date of the fully signed funding agreement
Applicants are advised to read the Business Innovation Grant Policy (pdf 108kb) before completing the application form.
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