Smart Grants & Business Funding

Every application is scored by a panel of judges, not every application is scored by the same panel. The winners are those with the best scores. It is a competition so the chances of success are dependent upon the number and quality of other applicants. To have the best chance of having one of the highest score you need to ensure that you application is as comprehensive and well written and researched.

It depends on the size and the length of your project. The current guidelines state that if your project runs for 6 to 18 months then your total project costs will have to be between £100k and £500k and can be from a single applicant or be collaborative. If your project is going to run between 18 months and 3 years then your total project costs will have to be between £100k and £2m and must be collaborative.

Put simply, no! It depends on your company’s size and how far advanced your project is.

We’ve worked with companies who have applied for a Smart Grant to fund their first project and some who have seen their project evolve from a Feasibility project through an Industrial Research project and are now on a final Experimental Development project prior to go to market. The only thing to bear in mind is that you shouldn’t start a particular element of your project until the funding is secured.

You can apply for the same project twice. Most applications fail as it is a very competitive process and only the highest scoring projects win. However, many grants succeed on their second application. All bids receive feedback, so if your initial application narrowly missed out, then we can use that feedback to improve the quality of the application and cover any areas considered weak by the original assessors. The success of the second submission will depend on the quality of the other applicants in the next round of funding, it may be weaker, it may be stronger.

In essence they are the UK Governments quasi funding body for research and development.  You can find out more about them here!