Yorkshire and Humber secures £50m RGF money

£50m of Regional Growth Fund money has been awarded to projects in Yorkshire and Humber, creating or safeguarding 5,500 jobs over ten years.

Successful bidders included Selby’s Optare plc, Wakefield’s Really Useful Products Limited and Leeds’ Harrison Spinks Beds Ltd.

This latest round of RGF money aims to leverage £160m of further private sector investment in the next ten years.

To date the region has had nearly £310m in Growth Fund support which is estimated to have created or safeguarded around 56,000 jobs.

Roger Marsh, Chair of the Leeds City Region LEP commented: “This is fantastic news on a further allocation of funding from the Regional Growth Fund and we are delighted to report a great demand from businesses for our existing £20 million Business Growth Programme.”

“We have received hundreds of enquiries and have allocated £4.1million already to 46 businesses across the city region, supporting the creation of more than 400 jobs and a further £5 million is expected to be allocated to new projects by the autumn.”

“This is about making a conscious effort to offer targeted support where it is needed. More than 95% of allocated funds from this programme have actually gone to SMEs, showing there is a huge unmet demand for funding business expansion projects across the city region.”

“We know that having access to the right kind of finance is critical to businesses and we are constantly looking for the best ways to support the growth of our key sectors and the economy.”