Grants for business premises

dave82_2

Hi,

Strange question not sure if this is the right board but...

Our electrician who is a mate was asking if I knew of any grants for opening a shop so he can expand into a full construction business.

Does anyone know of any such grant or where to start looking.

Cheers D

phill99

Depending on his age, he may be elegible for on from The Prince's Trust

http://www.princes-trust.org.uk/default.aspx

Also look here

http://www.howtobooks.co.uk/business/small-business/grants.asp

leveller2911

There may be some grants available for new start up businesses but as far as I'm aware none for existing businesses as I've looked into it myself.

You can get some interest free loans from the Carbon Trust to help businesses become more Carbon Neutral (heating,power etc)..Try posting the question on the business thread as you may get replies from people "in the know".....

Alan_M_2

Sadly this is where the UK falls down in a major way. There is little to no help for getting business off the ground, the banks were shocking were before the world collapsed financially now they are simply not interested unless you have capital or are willing to secure everything against your home.

I remember the list of qualifications I was required to have for the Small FIrms Loan Guarantee Scheme (SFLGS) which became the Enterprice Finance Guarante scheme (EFG) - if I'd complied with the full requirements I wouldn't have actually needed to borrow any money at all.

All these schemes are desgined for firms that have done the hard bit of starting up and becoming profitable, they then don't have capacity or capital to expand.

In the UK, unless you have a criminal background, there is very little help indeed for any form of business startup.

keystone

Alan_M wrote: »

In the UK, unless you have a criminal background, there is very little help indeed for any form of business startup.

So I go a do a bank job first then? But then I won't need the startup help will I? Perverse this country is.

Cheers

dave82_2

"All these schemes are desgined for firms that have done the hard bit of starting up and becoming profitable, they then don't have capacity or capital to expand."

Perhaps they would qualify then? They already run a sucessful electricians business they just want to expand and do construction.

Alan_M_2

keystone wrote: »

So I go a do a bank job first then? But then I won't need the startup help will I? Perverse this country is.

Cheers

Youth offenders get business start up grants a startup business would dream of...it's an oddity.

Alan_M_2

dave82 wrote: »

Perhaps they would qualify then? They already run a sucessful electricians business they just want to expand and do construction.

It's not impossible, they won't get any form of grant but they may get secured lending.

The SFLGS no longer exists, the EFG is a lot of hot air - just read the spec of it. If any of the directors own any property then you basically don't qualify on the grounds you can secure lending against your own property.

We tried to use it to get one of our product lines into a very well known builders merchant brand - (over 200 stores) - they'd even approached us rather than us going to them.

We went to the bank - they wouldn't entertain any expansion without firm purchase orders, we got a written agreement in principal (from the merchant) subject to our banks approval which was as close to a purchase order as we were going to get.

We needed a credit line of in the region of $750,000 (£500,000 at the time) a month to buy and supply the stock - our bank agreed to "stock finance" at 4% interest per month on the entire credit line no matter how much was being utilised at any one time. It wasn't financially viable - the finance and credit we had to offer absorbed the entire profit margin.

Now you can see where they generate all these bonuses.

If you need to borrow £1 Million, you need to walk into a bank with collateral for £1 Million - basically with lending as it is now - to be able to qualify for lending, you generally need to be in a position where you actually don't need it - if that makes sense.