DO YOU HAVE A MAJOR INVESTMENT PLAN, BUT ARE HELD BACK BY LACK OF FUNDING?
This month, the Deputy Prime Minister launched the new "City Deals” initiative, which is designed to help England's largest cities stimulate business growth.
Birmingham is one of the 8 core cities being offered the opportunity to take part in the scheme, which will result in Government devolving transformative new powers via a series of bespoke "City Deals”.
The first wave of deals will be with the eight largest cities and their surrounding Local Enterprise Partnerships.
The Government are encouraging cities to bid for this money to help clusters of businesses benefit their area and Birmingham City Council are looking to bring together investment ready businesses to form a consortium to develop a joint bid to access the £1bn pot available to small businesses via the Regional Growth Fund to create jobs. The bid must be seeking a minimum of £1m from RGF.
The bid must be industry led, so whilst Birmingham City Council will co-ordinate the bid, it will be the cluster of participating businesses which determines the shape of the bid.
The first consultation meeting is planned to take place in February 2012, so if you feel that your business would like to be involved, and you fulfil the criteria below, then we would like to hear from you.
INTERESTED?
For you to be considered as eligible to take part in the consortium, you will need to fulfil the following criteria:
· Be an existing Small to Medium sized Enterprise (SME)
· Your business needs to be based in the Greater Birmingham & Solihull LEP area (Birmingham, Solihull, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, Tamworth, Bromsgrove, Cannock Chase, Redditch and Wyre Forest).
· Have a major investment plan
· Looking for funding to grow your business turnover and profitability over the next 3 years
· Looking to safeguard and create new jobs over the next 3 years
If you can answer yes to the above questions, then we would like to hear from you by 31st January 2012.
Depending on the level of interest we will be looking to call a meeting in February to explore this opportunity further.