All about Government Grants

(See also GovGrants Global Membership)

The Purpose of Schemes

All publicly funded schemes have, as their ultimate purpose, the encouragement and development of trade and commerce. New and growing businesses create jobs and bring wealth.

Long-term, governments strive to create the economic conditions, which foster the start and growth of businesses. As a means of helping achieve this objective public (taxpayer's) money is made available to help and encourage enterprise. The money is distributed through a variety of ministries, departments, agencies and quangos both on a national and local basis. (In addition to the national government the European Commission is a main source of extra funds, also distributed through a variety of EC and other agencies.)

Each awarding body (whether it be a ministry, agency or quango) has its own specific remit and objectives and may spend part of its budget on schemes to help achieve these. For example, the Department of Employment and Education may offer grants to assist firms to employ or train new workers. It might do this directly through a nationally administered scheme or indirectly, by funding Business Link or the Enterprise Agencies, who, in turn, will use this money to run their own schemes.

The result of this method of funding is that there are very many different schemes, offered by a large number of different awarding bodies. Together, the variety of schemes will cover most if not all activities any one business will be engaged in, including the following:

• Employment
• Training
• Marketing
• Manufacturing
• Design
• Quality
• Exporting
• Research & Development
• Property/Premises
• Technology Transfer
• Environment
• Start-Up

For the most part schemes are available to businesses across the United Kingdom although some will contain restrictions on application according to a number of different factors.