Grant fund worth £4m available to qualifying businesses in Cumbria

I’ve recently been working with two of my clients who previously secured in excess of £100,000 of grant funding to assist the expansion of their businesses. This funding has enabled both businesses to achieve both growth in turnover and growth in Cumbrian employment, which is great news for the Cumbrian economy.

I was pleased to see the Cumbria Chamber announced last month local businesses were welcome to apply for grants of between £10,000 and £1,000,000 from the latest Cumbria Growth Fund. The grants are focussed on businesses that are in the manufacturing industry, or B2B sector.

The Chamber has made it very easy to see if your business is eligible with a simple ‘expression of interest’ form. You will then be contacted to discuss eligibility, and either invited to submit a full application, or be told why you do not qualify.

If your business has less than 250 employees, a free Growth Hub advisor will help with the ‘expression of interest’ and full application if applicable. Contact Lydia at the Cumbria Chamber: lydia@cumbriachamber.co.uk or call 0845 226 0040 for further information.

If your business has more than 250 employees, you can save time and assess eligibility and discuss the percentage of grant funding required by contacting Suzanne: suzanne@cumbriachamber.co.uk or call 0845 226 0040.

Examples of eligible expenditure can include the following:

Capital Expenditure

• Land and buildings, including the purchase or lease of larger premises, premises extension and re-fit
• Plant, equipment and machinery
• Salary costs of new employees whose jobs have been created as a result of the project

R&D Expenditure

• Salaries (supported by timesheets)
• Overheads
• Materials
• Costs of instruments and equipment
• Consultancy and other external costs

Training Expenditure (if associated with an investment project which will create/safeguard jobs)

• Trainers’ personnel costs for time spent delivering training
• Trainers’ and trainees’ operating costs directly linked to the project
• Maximum training costs is 10% of project spend

Excluded business sectors

• Business start-ups
• Fisheries and agriculture
• Coal & steel sectors
• Retail
• Local services
• Tourism (including hotels and leisure facilities)
• Warehousing
• Construction
• Education
• Health service (including medical services and residential care)
• Public sector
• Infrastructure
• Franchise operations
• Property development and investment

If you would like to talk through your project plans please do get in touch and we can see how to arrange the most suitable finance for your business.

Grant Smith