Finance | Oct 26

Small business funding schemes you can access right now

Finance | Oct 26

Find grants, loans, investment, and other financial support to start, sustain and grow your business

Dan Martin Small business journalist, event host

Reading Time 4 minutes

Finding capital to launch, sustain, or scale a business can often feel like an uphill battle due to a lack of available resources. However, there are a wide range of funding schemes you can access beyond the loans and other finance solutions offered by high street banks.

This guide outlines business funding opportunities you can apply for today.

British Business Bank regional funds

The British Business Bank’s Nations and Regions Investment Funds provide loans and debt finance from £25,000 to £2 million and equity investment up to £5 million.

The funds are designed to support SMEs outside of London and close regional funding gaps.

The funds currently open are:

Innovate UK funding

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Investment, is the UK’s national innovation agency. It provides grants and loans to help businesses with the commercialisation of products, processes, and services through research and development (R&D).

Innovate UK focuses on sectors aligned with the government’s Industrial Strategy:

Advanced manufacturing
Clean energy
Creative industries
Defence
Digital and technologies
Life sciences

The latest Innovate UK funding opportunities are here.

Read our guide on how to successfully access funding from Innovate UK here.

Start Up Loans

The government-backed Start Up Loans scheme provides unsecured personal loans of up to £25,000 to start or grow a business.

You can borrow two loans subject to eligibility conditions, including trading for less than 60 months.

R&D tax relief

Research and development (R&D) tax credits provide a reduction in corporation tax or a cash payment for companies that invest in innovative science and technology projects.

R&D for tax purposes is defined as a project that ‘seeks to achieve an advance in science or technology’ and does so through ‘the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty’. The full definition is here.

There are two R&D tax relief schemes:

Merged R&D Expenditure Credit (RDEC) scheme provides a 20% expenditure credit on qualifying R&D costs.
Enhanced R&D Intensive Support (ERIS) allows loss-making R&D intensive SMEs to:
- deduct an extra 86% of qualifying R&D costs when calculating their adjusted trading loss to make a 186% total deduction
- claim a payable tax credit worth up to 14.5% of the surrenderable loss

Grants

Grants are funding you don’t need to pay back. Some grant schemes provide all the funding, while others are match funded, which means you have to find part of the total amount from other sources.

Grants are provided by public sector organisations, charities, not-for-profits, and private companies.

Grants typically focus on specific business activities such as exporting, investing in new technology, and becoming more sustainable. Many grants are region and business size specific.

You can search for grants on the government’s website here and here. There are also funding databases for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Grants are often provided by local councils. Find the website for your local council here and check if any grants are available. In England, local growth hubs can help businesses find relevant grants.

Examples of grants specific to different sectors, types of businesses and people include:

grants for arts and culture organisations from Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales and Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
grants for social enterprises from UnLtd and National Lottery Community Fund.
grants for agricultural businesses from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
grants for manufacturers from Made Smarter.
grants for female entrepreneurs from Innovate UK Women in Innovation, European Prize for Women Innovators.

Export finance

UK Export Finance (UKEF) supports businesses to trade internationally with government-backed working capital finance and insurance.

These finance products help businesses win export contracts by providing attractive financing terms to their buyers, fulfil contracts by supporting working capital loans or contract bonds, and get paid by insuring against buyer default.

Advice for securing business funding

Dan Martin Small business journalist, event host

Dan Martin is a freelance small business journalist and event/podcast host with over 20 years of experience. He is currently the editor of SMEWeb.com and the host of the Small Business Sessions, the podcast by business network Enterprise Nation which has run for nine series. Dan also works with Bristol Creative Industries, the not-for-profit organisation that supports the city’s creative sector.

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