Growth vouchers are a new scheme from the Government that aims to help small businesses in England get the help they need to grow. £30 million of help is available for SMEs to spend on finding an accredited advisor.
The grant will cover 50% of the advisor’s efforts, with the business matching the amount. Thousands of accredited advisors who will accept the vouchers can be found on the Growth Voucher Marketplace powered by Enterprise Nation.
I know that one Tamebay reader has already been successful in bagging a grant for £2000 and claims that the process was both swift and easy (which seems almost impossible to believe for something that involves the government) and they are now sizing up advisors and working out precisely what help they need. I’ll keep you posted
The man behind the scheme in government is Lord Young, formerly a business minister in the 1980s, he’s now a sort of roving business champion within the government. So it’s apt that he will be talking about the scheme with Emma Jones and answering your questions during a webinar this week.
The webinar is on Thursday 6th February at noon and full details and registration details are on this page.
2 Responses
Opposite experience here.
Applied online a few days ago and had the 40 minute telephone interview this morning. We’ve just found out we were successful. Sounds like good news doesn’t it? It’s not.
The voucher is to access someone to produce a 12 month budget forecast and and/or to get assistance in raising capital for growth. Neither of those items were discussed and I specifically told the person I spoke to that we did not need to raise money for our growth plans but that seemingly was ignored. So now we have one of these vouchers and we won’t use it because it’s useless to us.
Also, be aware that you have to engage the advisor/consultant and pay them in full yourself for the work they’ll do and then submit a claim for half of what you’ve spent which the scheme ‘will do their best to settle in 30 days’.
How is this a £2k matching grant then exactly? A complete waste of time in my opinion. Wish I hadn’t read about it in the first place.
Hi Dan,
I am looking into this but I cannot find your details on the GV system. Can you supply me with further details?
The subsidy we are offering is designed to make it easier for businesses to pay for external advice. Unfortunately, we can only reimburse businesses after they have paid for the advice to avoid fraudulent claims and to ensure we don’t waste tax payers money.
Best Regards,
Gavin