Innovate UK pauses flagship grants scheme for SMEs amid major review

Innovate UK temporarily suspended the Grants Smart-25 million pounds annually-to fix how to support SMES.

The pause of temporary suspension aims to address excessive subscription issues, as success rates are less than 10 percent for applicants, and perhaps low up to 2 percent according to some.

Under the current plan, small and medium -sized companies can demand up to 70 percent of the costs for viable research projects. The latest tour of the successful recipient has already been informed, but no other awards are presented until an initiative renewed – which was postponed before the summer.

A spokesman for Innovate UK said the review is partially in response to “incredibly low” success rates. She added, “We know the effort and often the cost that comes into these applications is.” “We want to ensure our support to companies with real growth potential, while facilitating their application as well.”

The review is also in line with government directives to focus on companies that have strong prospects for expanding and creating jobs. Currently, applicants do not have to prove their potential for future growth. This may change when the new scheme is released, although Innovate UK insists that temporary suspension is not moved by any treasury financing discounts.

Companies have increasingly turned into specialized consultants to improve their grant requests, a trend recognized by the United Kingdom’s innovation that can drain resources. Some industry numbers, including EWAN KIRK, are classified as a “innovation tax”. The agency aims to make future application operations “easier and comprehensive” to reduce these additional costs.

Innovate UK runs a budget of 1.1 billion pounds, which supports more than 450,000 “innovators” annually, including more than 10600 technical companies through the business growth program. However, the low success rates expected to criticize online recently when the organization initially granted only 25 regions in its 4 million pounds system in the innovation scheme; Later, a total of 50 increased.

The agency is now collecting reactions from small and medium companies as part of its review. Interested companies can participate in a poll to be accessed via the United Kingdom innovation site.

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