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Growing Business Fund Grant Panel Meeting Minutes (Unconfirmed)
Wednesday, 03 June 2020 | 10.00am - 12.30pm
Held via conference call on Microsoft Teams
Present - Panel:
Dominic Keen (DK)
Martin Ince (MI)
Paul Stewart (PS)
Daryl Griffiths (DG)
Dr Sumathi Sundram (SS)
In Attendance:
Julie West (JW)
Rose Joy (RJ)
Barry Henson (BH)
Amanda Castell (AC)
(Chair)
Martin Ince Communications
Center Parcs
Burnett Barker Solicitors
S&V Consultants Ltd
New Anglia LEP
New Anglia LEP
Suffolk County Council
Finance East
Actions outstanding | Updates from the meeting: Wednesday, 13 May 2020
Terms of Reference (ToR) - these have been accepted and passed to the IAC committee to agree
before its added to the LEP website. Performance is meaning performance of the panel as a whole and
not individually.
New Anglia Business Resilience and Recovery Grant Scheme - out of the identified 250 businesses
there were only four businesses who are working with colleagues to supply PPE.
Growing Business Fund Panel Membership - a letter of thanks to Jeanette Wheeler for her time on the
GBF Panel has been drafted. JW will forward draft letter to MB to send on behalf of the Growing Business
Fund Panel. As a point of interest, to include in the letter, are the following statistics achieved during
Jeanette’s three-year tenure: £10.7m of grant has been approved, attracting £103.7m match funding and
secured just over 1000 jobs.
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Welcome and Introductions
DK to act as Chair in the absence of MB on the call. DK welcomed members and roll call made for
attendance purposes. Meeting quorate.
2
Not present on telecon call
Mike Burrows; Jackie Potter, Micropress Limited; Chris Dashper, New Anglia LEP; Jason Middleton, New
Anglia LEP; Neil Sargent, Finance East; Stuart Ager, Finance East; Roberta Willner, Norfolk County
Council; Vimmi Hayes, Suffolk County Council
3
Declarations of Interest and GDPR
Declarations of Interest - No Declarations of Interest declared.
4
Meeting Minutes: Panel Meeting held on Wednesday, 13 May 2020
Minutes confirmed, with minor amendments.
5
New Application for Approval (1)
Primo Manufacturing Limited - Agreed to support
Approved grant - £120,000 - awarded under De Minimus
Note: Medium sized company
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Eight full-time positions to be created.
The panel noted the low pay; however, it was felt that the market will dictate the salary levels?
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Small Grant Scheme (SGS) / Growth Through Innovation (GTI) Updates
Small Grant Scheme - JW provided update.
The Panel noted the award of four Small Grant Scheme grants in the month of April 2020, totalling
£55,333 (Grants Awarded) - see Annexe 1.
Growth Through Innovation - JW provided update.
The Panel noted the award of one Growth Through Innovation grant in the month of April 2020, totalling
£22,500 (Grant Awarded) - See Annexe 2.
Resilience and Recovery Grant Scheme - JW provided update.
The Panel noted the award of four Resilience & Recovery grants in the month of April 2020 with a further
five being processed, and six in the pipeline. One of the approvals was Panel Graphics which has been
featured in the press.
It was noted that with the opening of the two other schemes, Growth Through Innovation, and the
Resilience and Recovery Grant Scheme, there are now a choice of five grants on offer to businesses.
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Funding, Updates and Jobs Creation
Small Grant Scheme
The overall programme total is now 292 grants paid, total paid out is just over £2.7m, with another 38
approved but unclaimed grants totalling £446k. 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 £299k remaining uncommitted funds and anticipate that this
will not be a problem as ahead of profile.
Growing Business Fund
No real change from last month, only £113,400 spent thus far this year. With today’s approval of £120k,
commitments are now £1.15m, so approx. 45% 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. In terms of what is
likely to go out, anticipate two grant payments this month of £385k and £180k, so it could be by the end of
June the figures will look much more favourable. Ideally, it would be good to have a couple of large
approvals at this stage of the year.
Growth Through Innovation
Two approvals have been made, totalling £43,987, with two other applications currently with the Panel for
approval totalling another £38,000, with more on the way going through the due diligence system.
GTI intervention rate - use GBER Article 25 (35% for medium sized businesses, 45% for small); Article
28 (50%) and Article 29 (50%). The spend categories are very specific so there is a lot of internal
assessment on these grants. The two approved were both at 45%.
Business Resilience & Recovery Scheme
There have been five approvals thus far, amounting to £185,631. Two further applications are with the
Panel for consideration. As this grant scheme is primarily for urgent funding to businesses, it has been
agreed with the LEP that Suffolk County Council will make a first payment of 50% of the grant to help with
cash flow and to help get the projects going as quickly as possible, with the balance being paid on receipt
of a satisfactory Claim.
The Business Resilience & Recovery Scheme has a funding pot of £3.5m but it will remain to be seen
how much of this funding pot gets allocated, as awards are under a temporary EU de-minimis increase,
which only runs until 31 December.
It was noted that the LEP has tried to keep the growth grant funds i.e. Growing Business Fund and Small
Grant Scheme as ‘growth funds’ to maintain the status and purpose of these. The Growth Through
Innovation Fund is a R&D grant scheme whilst the Business Resilience & Recovery Grant was
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deliberately positioned between ‘growth grants’ and Government support and aimed at short term support
with specific criteria set.
If all the grants are added together this comes to a total of c£9m which is a significant amount of money
to be delivered into the Norfolk and Suffolk economy that is on top of the grants pushed out by
government.
No doubt in future, we will have to undertake some wider impact exercise to see what benefit the grants
have produced and in the case of the Resilience & Recovery Grant scheme what impact the grant
contribution made to business recovery.
Job creation - the jobs figures have not changed much in current scenario. GBF and old SGS have
registered three more giving a total of 2349 and Small Grant Scheme (jobs not a requirement) the figure
remains unchanged at 138.5.
Audit - at an operational level it was noted that the LEP had 12 Growing Business Fund grants audited.
With four grant schemes now in place, processes are being reviewed to ensure more practical retention of
grant records and evidence electronically to make future Audit exercises more efficient.
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GBF Applications ‘Pipeline’
Hopeful of one application being presented to the July Growing Business Fund Panel Meeting.
It was noted that with the current climate businesses appear to be putting capital expenditure on hold
although for some businesses Covid-19 is providing an opportunity to diversify and grow.
No EOIs.
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PR and Marketing
JW provided update. Not a lot has changed, with work geared up towards helping businesses with Covid-
19; this has been the main message from the LEP and Growth Hub.
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Any Other Business
None.
The meeting closed at 11.05am
Next Meeting via conference call on Microsoft Teams
Wednesday, 01 July 2020 |10.00am - 12.30pm
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Annexe 1
New Anglia Small Grant Scheme projects approved in April 2020
Approved
Grant
Awarded (£)
Genesis Sporthomes Ltd
10,272
James White Drinks Ltd (2)
24,434
Frugalpac Ltd
13,427
Xcell Misting Ltd
7,200
Total
55,333
Annexe 2
New Anglia Growth Through Innovation projects approved in April 2020
Approved
Grant
Awarded (£)
Agricultural and Mechanical Ltd (Agrimech)
22,500
Total
22,500