Growing Business Fund Grant Panel Meeting Minutes (Unconfirmed)
Wednesday, 08 July 2020 | 10.00am - 12.30pm
Held via conference call on Microsoft Teams
Present - Panel:
C-J Green (C-JG)
Brave Goose
Martin Ince (MI)
Martin Ince Communications
Jackie Potter
Micropress Limited
Paul Stewart (PS)
Center Parcs
Dominic Keen (DK)
Britbots and Chairman
Dr Sumathi Sundram (SS)
S&V Consultants Ltd
In Attendance:
Julie West (JW)
New Anglia LEP
Jason Middleton (JM)
New Anglia LEP
Barry Henson (BH)
Suffolk County Council
Amanda Castell (AC)
Finance East
Stuart Ager (SA)
Finance East
Neil Sargent (NS)
Finance East
Actions outstanding | Updates from the meeting: Wednesday, 03 June 2020
None
1
Welcome and Introductions
DK welcomed members and roll call made for attendance purposes. C-J Green, LEP Board has joined
GBF Panel which brings our voting numbers up to eight. Meeting quorate.
2
Not present on telecon call
Chris Dashper, New Anglia LEP; Rose Joy, New Anglia LEP; Roberta Willner, Norfolk County Council
and Vimmi Hayes, Suffolk County Council
Apologies: Mike Burrows, Darryl Griffiths
3
Declarations of Interest and GDPR
Declarations of Interest - No Declarations of Interest declared.
4
Meeting Minutes: Panel Meeting held on Wednesday, 03 June 2020
Minutes confirmed.
5
New Application for Approval (1)
FreightForce Distribution Limited - Agreed to support
Approved grant - £260,000 -
Note: Medium sized Company within an Assisted Area.
Thirteen full-time positions to be created.
6
Small Grant Scheme (SGS) / Growth Through Innovation (GTI) Updates
Small Grant Scheme - JM provided update.
The Panel noted the award of three Small Grant Scheme grants in the month of May 2020, totalling
£15,166 (Grants Awarded) and £75,831 (Total Project Cost) - see Annexe 1.
Page 1 of 4
Growth Through Innovation - JM provided update.
The Panel noted the award of one Growth Through Innovation grant in the month of May 2020, totalling
£22,500 (Grant Awarded) and £50,000 (Total Project Cost) - see Annexe 2.
7
Funding, Updates and Jobs Creation
Small Grant Scheme
The overall Programme total is now 295 grants paid, total paid out is £2.75m, with another 41 approved
but unclaimed grants totalling £462k. The position overall for the Small Grant Scheme is very good,
albeit the number of applications has slowed down, as has the number of Claims due to requests to
extend original timescales due to Covid-19. The scheme has until November 2021 to pay out the
unclaimed grants and allocate and spend the £251k remaining uncommitted funds.
Growing Business Fund
A further £600k has been paid out recently, making £714k for the year to date. With today’s approval of
£260k, commitments are now £779k, so just over half of this year’s allocation has either been paid or
committed. We still have a cut-off point of 31 March 2021 to get all monies paid out though. The LEP
does have options to re-allocate some of the funding to other Programmes, should it be deemed
necessary.
Growth Through Innovation Fund
This new fund is still in its early stages, however there have been eight approvals thus far, total grants
£159k. This three-year programme has £2m available.
Business Resilience & Recovery Grant Scheme
Since the first grant approval on 7 May, there have already been 31 awards under this new programme,
total grants £1.2m. a further five applications totalling £225k are with the Panel for consideration. Already
20 businesses have returned their grant Acceptance, allowing for £415k to be paid as first stage grants.
An initial £3.5m has been allocated to this scheme.
Job Creation
Not surprisingly, job creation has slowed considerably in the last two/three months, with just four more
confirmed since the last meeting. Total for GBF and ‘old’ SGS is now 2,353. New SGS figure is again
unchanged at 138.5.
Project Updates
MENTA - considerable uplift in Project costs reported, now £546,155, after grant Approval. After
consideration, SCC has used its discretion to increase the grant award by 10% to £54,329. West Suffolk
Council is also increasing its support to the Project.
Pecksniffs Bespoke Fragrances & Cosmetics Ltd - the business has recently been placed into
Administration. Grant award was £202,500 towards property purchase. Information has been provided to
the Administrators in the usual way, and SCC / LEP will be registered as a Creditor.
8
GBF Applications ‘Pipeline’
There are a number of good applications which are being prepared at present, none will be ready for
August however 2 possibly 3 might make the next Panel meeting on 2nd September.
The Growth Hub team are very busy with the new grants that the LEP have introduced, however they are
also working on six GBF EOIs which should shortly be passed to Finance East for due diligence.
There is also a discussion with Finance East and the Growth Hub to streamline some of the grant
application paperwork that the businesses are required to complete; this will enable the Companies to
change from one grant scheme to another if it becomes necessary/ beneficial without redoing the
paperwork.
9
PR and Marketing
A number of Case Studies have been completed and are now on the LEP and Growth Hub websites,
details of another six grant recipients have been passed to the Comms team at the LEP.
Page 2 of 4
