Notification
Business funding and grants
There are many grants available to support businesses with different goals. These aim to help businesses to make the investments they need to prosper and grow. You can find information on current business funding and grants on the Heart of the South West website.
Rural England Prosperity Fund
This programme closed on Monday 9 December 2024. All projects must be completed by the end of February 2025.
Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) Somerset has been allocated £3.4m of capital funding for the rural economy, subject to the submission and approval of an Investment Plan.
This fund works with the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It replaces the European LEADER programmes. The grant money is split over two years with 25 percent of the funds in Year 1 (£856,686) and 75 percent in Year 2 (£2,570,058).
Applicants will need 50 percent match funding for their project. The grant is paid retrospectively therefore payments will only be made against cleared spend.
The Rural England Prosperity Fund supports the aims of the government’s Levelling Up White Paper and Future Farming Programme. It will fund capital projects for small businesses and community infrastructure. This will help to improve productivity and strengthen the rural economy and rural communities.
The Rural Fund objectives sit within the UKSPF investment priorities for:
- Supporting Local Business
- Community and Place
The Rural Fund provides capital funding to:
- Support new and existing rural businesses to develop new products and facilities that will be of wider benefit to the local economy. This includes farm businesses looking to diversify income streams, but not into food and drink.
- Support new and improved community infrastructure, providing essential community services and assets for local people and businesses to benefit the local economy. Projects must be in a rural area.
For the purpose of this fund, Defra’s classification of rural areas is:
- towns, villages and hamlets with populations below 10,000 and the wider countryside
- market or ‘hub towns’ with populations of up to 30,000 that serve their surrounding rural areas as centres of employment and in providing services (this will exclude funding of projects in Taunton, Bridgwater and Yeovil)
Investments must demonstrate value for money and also, how they contribute to net zero and nature recovery objectives.
Further detail can be found in this Guidance document.
To discuss a potential project, please email REPF@Somerset.gov.uk