Rural grants available.

One of the strands of the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) is the Growth Programme.  As the name suggests, it is design to help improve the economic performance of rural areas.  There is a budget of £177m available to support business development and start ups, tourism, renewable heat and energy projects, advice and training, and rural broadband.  Information on how to apply for the growth programme is now available online (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/growth-programme-grants-for-the-rural-economy)

Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) have published strategies, which are available on individual LEP websites.  These detail the funding priorities for each area. The RPA will then announce ‘call for applications’ for which applicants can respond to.  Grants can cover between 10% and 100% of the cost of the projects and all applicants will need to be registered on the Rural Payments service.  An initial ‘outline application’ will need to be submitted giving details of the project including location, what the project will do, costs and benefits and information about the business applying (stocking, cropping, three years of accounts etc.).  These will then be scored against other applications, this process may take up to 40 days.  Once past this stage, applicants will be asked to submit a full application, this is still no guarantee that funding will be granted. The outline application form along with guidance on completing are available from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/growth-programme-application-form-and-guidance

Details of open ‘calls for applications’ are available at https://www.gov.uk/european-structural-investment-funds.  There are currently around 35 calls.  The call details the monies available, minimum and maximum grant amounts, application deadlines and the types of items/projects that will be funded.  Not all calls on the list will be for the Rural Growth fund – the page covers all sources of European funding.  However a number of projects are currently available for ‘business support’ in rural areas – this covers capital grants to help businesses grow in areas such as food processing and rural tourism.