The pilot Find a Grant service is now open to all businesses to trial and initially features 24 government grants. The initial pilot has been tested by 450 Government Grant Community members.
The service will allow users to access government grant funding, search and filter to find a grant that matches their needs, eligibility to apply for a grant and how to apply. Each grant has a brief description, the value of the grants available, the total funding pot and the closing date for applications.
The plan will be tested and developed across the next year, with plans to launch the full service in March 2023. The grant scheme team is working across government to get more grants added during the pilot phase.
Lucia Webster, delivery director, Grants Applicant Programme, said: ‘Over the last three months we have worked with the Government Grants Community - from the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector and small to medium-sized businesses - on the early functionality. In the latest release you can test the ability to browse, search and filter for a grant - and sign up for basic notifications.
‘All of these grants are live or are about to open, covering a wide range of schemes from support for workplace electric car charge points to support with international trade.
‘Should you wish to apply for any, you can. At the moment, you will be taken to the existing grant maker’s application site.’
Over the next year, the scheme will be developed to provide alerts for new grants added to Find a Grant to let businesses know about new opportunities; improvements to the search options to make it even faster and simpler to find grants; and the ability to register and upload an organisation's information just once, to make the application process more streamlined.
As part of the Grants Applicant Programme work the government is also looking into the extent and availability of demographic and equality data for the allocation of grants across government.
Webster said: ‘Getting to today is a real and significant achievement. But we are not done yet. I know we can co-create a first-rate Find a Grant and Apply for a Grant service. We have under 12 months left.’
Find out more about the Government Grants Service here.
