BIS has announced Round 6 of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) is open, with a deadline of September 30th 2014.
This 6th Round has over £200m available for bidders and can provide grant funding for costs incurred up until March 2017.
The usual rules of a minimum grant request of £1m from private sector bidders remains but, unlike RGF Round 5, bids can be:
- on an individual company basis (directly creating jobs and leveraging private investment) or
- programme bids (run by intermediaries offering grant or loan schemes) to others
Applicants should be aware that a new EU State Aid regime comes into effect on 1st July 2014 and bids must comply. Decisions are expected in early 2015, meaning projects applying for funding cannot have started prior to that date.
So call Soapstone for an initial chat to see whether your project would meet the criteria.