Coast to Capital Business Growth Grants

Are you a high growth, innovative small or medium business? Or one delivering green or low carbon goods and services? Are you planning to expand and grow but not finding it easy to find the finance required? Would a grant of up to 25% of the total project cost make the difference between going ahead and not being able to?

If so then our innovation and green business grant could be for you.

Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership is inviting expressions of interest from high growth and innovation, and / or low carbon and environmental technology small and medium businesses that are looking to expand and create new jobs. Grants of between £5,000 and £100,000 will be available to eligible businesses. We will also consider grants of a higher value where a greater impact on employment growth can be shown.

Grants may be spent on a wide range of eligible items including, research and development, innovation and product/service development, breaking into new markets, skills development, plant and equipment, business premises and other capital items.

To be eligible businesses must:

• Show how the grant will lead to new jobs
• Be able to demonstrate that they have explored fully other sources of funding without success
• Show other investment alongside the grant - we will provide up to 25% of the project for grants of £100,00 and under and you will need to provide the remaining 75% and we will provide up to 20% of the project for grants over £100,000 and you will need to provide the remaining 80%. Other forms of investment could be retained profits, loans, equity finance or investment funds.
• Have premises in or be planning to create new jobs in one of these Local Authority areas: Adur | Brighton and Hove | Croydon | Lewes| Reigate & Banstead | Arun | Chichester | Epsom and Ewell | Mid Sussex | Worthing
• Be planning at least one of the following: - To grow your business by 20% over the next 3 years. - To introduce new goods or services or other innovation - To exploit leading edge technology - To develop and market low carbon and environmental goods and services - To supply goods and services to one of the major environmental projects in this area including the Sussex Energy Saving Programme and Off-Shore Windfarms.

Applications are now open, businesses will first be required to complete an expression of interest form which Coast to Capital will review and decide whether businesses will be invited to make a full application. For further information please visit http://www.coast2capital.org.uk/helping-business-growth/regional-growth-fund or alternatively email a member of our Regional Growth Fund team on rgf@coast2capital.org.uk

This initiative is a partnership between Coast to Capital, West Sussex County Council, Brighton and Hove City Council, London Borough of Croydon, the Universities of Brighton, Sussex and Chichester, Wired Sussex and The Argus. Eligibility criteria and terms and conditions will apply.

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