General business support grants

For your region and county, the best guide to grants is normally maintained by your local Business Link office.  Business Link advisers are able to provide you with guidance on selecting suitable grants. To try a good example of how this works for rural businesses, look at the Ruralbiz site from the East Midlands.

Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) 2007-2013

From 2007, the Regional Development Agencies, Natural England and the Forestry Commission, covering the socio-economic and environmental elements of the new programme respectively, will deliver the new RDPE.

The new RDPE was due to be launched in January 2007. However, there are delays at national level whilst DEFRA negotiates further changes to the UK budget, and it is unlikely that the European Commission will approve the UK’s programme until summer 2007 at the earliest.

Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE)

WiRE is a very successful national networking and business club, with over 2000 business members. WiRE offers a grant finding service appropriate to women members establishing or growing rural businesses.