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Gateshead launches business grant scheme

Three-quarters of a million pounds has been allocated by a North East council to help local companies ride out the recession.

Gateshead Council will create a new £750,000 Enterprise and Innovation Fund, designed to stimulate business investment in Gateshead.

The fund will be used to offer financial grants to businesses over the next three years. Three separate grants are being offered – a Regeneration Grant, aimed at creative businesses, engineering firms and businesses using or developing low carbon or renewable energy technology, a Development Grant, for projects that are developing workspace for creative, design and engineering sectors, and a Business Start Up Grant to help with the purchase of productive equipment, ICT equipment or alterations to business premises.

Gateshead Council is targeting this support within a proposed Enterprise and Employment Zone that will cover the Team Valley, Central Gateshead and part of East Gateshead including Baltic Business Quarter.

Councillor Mick Henry, Leader of Gateshead Council, said: “We appreciate the problems that local businesses are facing at the moment. From our point of view, the importance of business investment to Gateshead’s future economic wellbeing cannot be underestimated.

“We’re therefore determined to do whatever we can to help local businesses to invest now, in preparation for the expected upturn in the economy.

“These new grants, which will put £250,000 into local businesses every year for the next three years, will offer a valuable financial cushion, and will help to boost developer confidence at a time when many are probably risk-averse.

“Businesses who invest now – when we are at the bottom of the economic cycle – will be best placed to ride the economic upturn as it happens. Hopefully, these new grants will help to give businesses in Gateshead the competitive edge they need when the recession ends.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .