Coventry City Council are running 3 projects simultaneously: Investment Fund, Green Business and Innovation. Below is a summary of all three:
Coventry & Warwickshire Investment Fund – aimed at companies with less than 250 employees (SME’s) in the Coventry and Warwickshire area to access grant funding (now up to £10k max) towards the cost of capital assets for the business. This can range from the purchase of a property, refurbishment costs, purchase of machinery, equipment, tooling, ICT hardware and software and vehicles for business purposes only (anything that you would add to the balance sheet and keep for a minimum of 3 years. The programme is available to businesses trading directly with other businesses only, it must be a proposed project that creates jobs. The current ratio is for every £10,000 grant you receive they expect one job to be created. Project and jobs must be complete by December 2021.
Coventry & Warwickshire Green Business Programme – aimed at SME’s based in Coventry and Warwickshire looking to reduce their carbon footprint output and energy bills,
The funding generally covers the following:
• LED Lighting
• More Efficient Machinery
• Insulation
• Renewable energy such as solar PV – However, renewable technology projects will not be eligible if they are also intending to utilise generation payments (e.g. feed in tariff /renewable heat incentive)
• Heating – Replacement boilers/burners, upgrades – electric to gas, zone control, heat recovery, oil to gas, thermal stores
• Ventilation – fans, distribution
• Refrigeration
• Off road vehicles
• Recycling and waste – compactors, balers and crushers through the replacement of inefficient machinery, lighting or heating.
The Green Business programme is under different rules and guidelines as it can offer 40% intervention. The team would have to carry out a free energy audit prior to working up a grant application. The programme will look at previous state aid that the company will have received in the last 3 years (must not exceed 200,000EURS) and has the same timescales as the Investment Fund and must also be business to business.
Coventry & Warwickshire Innovation Programme – aimed at SME’s based in Coventry and Warwickshire who are developing innovative products and services and bringing it to the market. The product or service must be innovative with grant funding available to cover covers capital and revenue costs. Capital elements is an intervention of up to 30% and revenue is 50%. The revenue element of the programme cannot cover the cost of current employee time working on the research, development or testing of the product/service and therefore the company that is applying would have to look at a 3rd party consultancy to carry out such work. Again, you would have to operate business to business for this as well. This programme has had high demand therefore there is a cap of £5k on any new applications
Well done and congratulations to those clients who have already received their grant.
If you are interested in any of these grants, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
