All About Government Grants

(See also GovGrants Global Membership)

FAQs

The following are among the most often questions asked:

i) How many schemes are there?

It is just not possible to be exact but the number is large. The Enterprise Advisory Service main database of grants usually consists of over 3000 different schemes at any one time. However, this does not carry any of the many hundreds of schemes offered by local sources such as local authorities, enterprise agencies, business link, TECs and others.

ii) How can I keep up to date with what's on offer?

There is no easy way to do this with just your own resource. Changes are constantly occurring with schemes being revised, introduced or withdrawn. We suggest you take up Membership of the Enterprise Advisory Service which is the least expensive and most convenient way to keep up to date - that way you will be able to interrogate the database at any time and see which schemes fit any current project.

iii) Who qualifies?

There is no business or industry sector, which is excluded from applying for assistance. There may be restrictions applying to individual schemes but such schemes are in the minority. Where there are restrictions these are usually in respect of size (normally measured by the size of the payroll) and this nearly always favours the smaller enterprise. If location restrictions apply thy will be in favour of one or more of the areas which are specially defined.

iv) What sort of grant is available?

There are many different ways in which industry receives public support. See section 2 - 'Types of Support', for a listing of the more usual types of schemes.

v) Is it true that manufacturing companies are favoured?

No, not at all. Generally, what a particular company does (whether it be in manufacturing, services, trade or whatever) is much less important than the number of people it employs and its contribution to the local or national economy.

vi) Are grant applications competitive?

In the sense that there is a limited amount of money in the kitty, each application competes with others. Some schemes are more obviously competitive in that the awarding body will state in advance that say, the 50 best proposals received in a period will be successful. However, these types of scheme are not the norm. There are various Awards schemes in existence however, where the nature of the scheme is to find and reward the best applications, perhaps on a regional and a national basis. Naturally with these types of schemes the number of winners is very limited.

vii) Is the money taxable?

Usually where the grant is in the form of cash it is treated as normal revenue for the business and is therefore subject to tax in the same way as ordinary revenue, after deduction of expenses and allowances. In some cases, elements or particular stages of a grant may attract tax liability. Schemes which provide assistance in kind (i.e. where no direct cash award is involved) will not normally attract any additional taxation.

viii) Do I need to engage a consultant?

Probably not in most instances. Most awarding bodies now try to make the application process simple and easy to understand and effect. Only in situations where the application is for a large sum and/or the awarding body is one where the bureaucracy makes dealings difficult should it be necessary to employ professional help.