Growing Business Fund
Yesterday, SCC paid out Polar Systems Limited grant of £127,741, thus giving a total so far paid out of
£967k, and with today’s three approvals, commitments now stand at £1.124m. Having added the extra
£1m to GBF, as mentioned at the last meeting, this leaves £1.7m still available; albeit £1m can be rolled
into the next financial year, therefore, there is still plenty of money available for GBF applications.
Noted the government line for defrayal is 31 March 2021 but that said, in recent years there has been the
ability to roll monies over, provided it is committed and legally contracted; therefore GBF needs to get the
£700k at least committed before end of March 2021, if not actually paid out.
Small Grant Scheme
There have been six more pay outs since the last Panel meeting, so overall Programme total is now 311
grants paid, total paid out is £2.88m, with another 46 committed, but not yet claimed, totaling £404k,
leaving £173k in the pot. JM referred to some larger grants potentially coming through so therefore the
£173k is only seven grants at the full £25k, but at the historic average (£9k) is more like 18 grants so still
some scope for SGS albeit the money is running down now. It has been slow in terms of Claims and the
average approval recently has not been high, however, SGS is on target and due to finish November next
year.
Growth Through Innovation Fund (GTI)
Three more approvals, giving a total of 23 approvals to date, totaling £376k and now have the first Claim
in. SCC hope to make the first payment on the GTI scheme this month.
Business Resilience & Recovery Grant Scheme
In terms of volume, this scheme continues to move forward very quickly. So far there have been 95
grants awarded, totaling £3.7m, with the first £3.5m tranche of money fully committed and have now
started on the second tranche (£2.6m). Of the 95 grants, 83 have had up-front first stage payment, and
18 have been signed off and their final Claims paid. Since the first approval under the scheme on 07 May
have paid out £1.9m in total. Noted that Claims are now coming in at a fast rate.
Query raised as to publicity of this LEP scheme. BH reported SCC is doing their best to ensure that there
is publicity being gained from each of the awarded grants under the BR&R scheme by holding back on
the final payment until some form of publicity evidence has been seen i.e. item(s) on company websites,
on social media, Twitter, Facebook etc. In some cases, with approval, the business has done their own
newspaper article, or other publicity as well. Noted the LEP will do proper case studies in due course.
BR&R applications - SA gave formal thanks to NS, AC and their work colleague Francis Kenealy, for the
huge amount of work and effort gone into handling the BR&R applications and so far have dealt with 44
applications since the beginning of September, with another 7-8 in the pipeline; this work is on top of the
GBF work. Appreciation given by the Panel.
BR&R intervention rate – the criteria for BR&R has been slightly revised and the intervention rate is
now 40% instead of 50% although the BR&R Panel do have the discretion, in individual cases, to change
the intervention rate, if justified. Also intended that there will be more focus on diversification and an
emphasis on the impact of Covid-19 on these grants as we go forward to committing the second part of
the money.
Job Creation - jobs are still being created even under the current climate as GBF and SGS remain
growth grants. Ten jobs have been confirmed since the last meeting for GBF and ‘old’ SGS and another
4.5 for SGS so totals respectively are 2,379 and 145.5.