Grant Funding for Smart Grants, R&D & Innovation

No, you don’t, grants are available for companies, educational establishments, research bodies, charities and individual researchers. However, to work with us using our grant writing services you will need to be a corporate entity.

That really depends on the grant that you are applying for some offer from £10,000 others up to several millions.

That really depends on the grant that you are applying for. Some might cover 100% of the costs others might cover a much smaller percentage. Most grants also operate on the basis of “match funding”, that means you have to pay the costs out first and then have them reimbursed. In reality that might mean that despite a grant covering 100% of the costs of a project you might need to bear 4 or 5 months of the project’s costs before you receive any grant money.

Our expert team will have an initial chat with you to determine whether you have a viable project and discuss the sort of grant that it might be worth pursuing. If there isn’t a specific “call” for the type of project that you are considering then we’ll consider whether it qualifies for a Smart Grant.

You’ll still be able to claim R&D Tax Relief for your funded project, but if you are an SME, then you’ll notice that your R&D Tax Relief Claim will be using something called RDEC, the Research and Development Expenditure Credit. This is a little less generous than the SME scheme, but you have had a lot of your project’s costs covered.

Sometimes problems arise when you receive a grant for a project and it only covers a very small proportion of the cost. If you receive De Minimis Aid, EU State Aid or General Block Exemption Regulation provided aid for an R&D project then all of your costs for that project will be included in an RDEC, regardless of the percentage of the costs that were funded. If you receive Horizon Europe Funding, which is nor a “State Aid”, then if your grant funds don’t cover 100% of the costs then you can claim for the remaining percentage of costs under the SME scheme, if you would ordinarily qualify. Be mindful of the amount of the grant, and narrow down the scope of the project if you are only applying for a small grant.

Generally most grants pay a quarter in arrears. So if you have a project that started in Q4 2022, you would have to cover those costs. You would then have to report on the costs that you had incurred this would need to be validated by a reporting accountant and then the funding request would be passed back to the grant provider. It might take up to an additional 2 months after the end of your reporting period for you to receive payments. Therefore you should be prepared to cover up to 6 months of the costs of your project.

Innovate have to be seen to be spending money wisely, so if your accounts haven’t been prepared on the “going concern” basis or you are being threatened with a winding up order or liquidation then you won’t be able to claim.

Anything that has an element of innovation to it could get funding. There are specific “Grand Challenges” laid out in the UK’s Industrial Strategy, they are:

• Artificial Intelligence and data
• Ageing society
• Clean growth
• Future of mobility

There are regular calls for projects related to these “Grand Challenges” so if you have a project that closely aligned with these, then you may be able to enter a specific competition. If your project doesn’t align with these then the Smart Grant is an “open” competition.