Last week (1 June) we launched our Discretionary Grant Fund scheme for Plymouth. One week on, as expected, we’ve seen high demand.
Plymouth has been given just £2.27million for this scheme, which we believe to be just 50% of what is actually needed to support businesses in our city. This means that we’re following the very strict criteria set out by Government to prioritise applications from the five priority categories, which in Plymouth includes boat based businesses.
We expect that demand for this scheme will continue to be high and that it will quickly be at capacity for the amount of money that we have been allocated. If you’ve applied for a grant through this scheme we’ll be contacting you as quickly as we can to let you know the outcome of your grant application.
It is likely that we will close the grant scheme earlier than planned due to the level of demand so we would encourage businesses to get applications in as quickly as possible. We will further update on the status of this fund later this week.
For more details about the discretionary grant scheme and the eligibility criteria set out by Government please click here.
Tudor Evans, Leader of Plymouth City Council said “We would have liked this scheme to be discretionary as government described, but our allocation of just £2.27m means that is not possible and we have been forced to closely follow the Governments priority criteria. We know this will mean that many businesses who need support in Plymouth will not be able to access funds in this scheme. I will be writing to Government to ask for additional funds so that we can meet all the gaps in the original grant funding scheme.”