Issue 59

GLAMPSITES
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Rural England
Prosperity Fund
A new grant scheme has come to town – here’s how to get your hands on the money
THERE’S NEW money coming for farm and
rural businesses via every rural authority
in England. Designed to support rural
businesses with grants towards capital
expenditure, to quote Defra, it will: “Support
new and existing rural businesses to develop
new products and facilities that will be of
wider benefit to the local economy. This
includes farm businesses looking to diversify
income streams.”
The Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF)
is grant money available to farms and other
businesses in rural local authority areas.
Your local council will have been checked
over by Defra to see if it qualifies as being
‘rural’. If it meets their rural criteria, and
some 111 authorities have done, then the
council will have been awarded REPF funds
and been asked to design a scheme to
deliver them.
The money is substantial, with a range of
from £400,000 to over £2m and often in the
order of about £700,000 to £1million. It is
short-lived and has to have been spent by
March 2025.
Defra is experienced in running grant
schemes and has done nationally for years.
Defra also funded the locally-devolved and
much lamented LEADER grants, where local
people in defined areas were awarded grants
for farm diversification and rural business
development. Those went with Brexit and
REPF is a sort of replacement, but with
added devolution. Each local authority has
to design its own scheme, under very broad
and not very specific guidance from Defra.
They are not experienced in this and there
have been delays but gradually schemes are
being announced.
THE DETAILS
How do you know what your local REPF
scheme is about? What it will fund? What are
the funding limits? What is the percentage
rate of the grant? What are the time limits?
With 111 uncoordinated grants, each council
may have different answers to each of
those questions. REPF is locally designed
to meet local needs, but inevitably it will
be something of a postcode lottery and
neighbouring businesses may have very
different grant opportunities and amounts.
All you can do is to look at your own council’s
website and see what their REPF scheme has
to offer.
To find out whether it is even a rural
area and has any REPF funds, the funding
allocations can be seen on the Defra website
at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/
rural-england-prosperity-fund-prospectus/
rural-england-prosperity-fund-allocations
HOW TO WIN A GRANT
There’s no such thing as free lunch and,
while grants are free money and don’t
have to be paid back, there are rules and
obligations which must be borne in mind.
It takes time to put together an application,
and then more time for it to be appraised
and for a decision to be made.
You have to be open about your business
and explain your plans, normally just
in writing – there won’t be face to face
meetings and discussions. Grants are
competitive as other people are after them
38 WWW.OPENAIRBUSINESS.COM