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Am I Eligible?

Any individual or small-to-medium-sized business (SMEs) in the Northwest can apply for financial support for a specific R&D project. You can also apply if you are planning to start a business in the region. The project you're seeking support for must be based around an innovative product or process.

Eligibility depends on the specific type of project you are seeking support for. The Types of Project section gives criteria for each of these.

The eligibility and application section will also show if your project is eligible for support. You can also progress through to application from here.

Eligible costs

Grants are designed to provide financial assistance for all the reasonable project specific costs of undertaking your R&D project. This includes:

  • staff pay
  • general overheads
  • materials
  • intellectual property
  • capital equipment
  • training
  • trials and testing
  • market assessment
  • production of technical manuals
  • third-party costs, such as consultants or sub-contractors

It may be possible for you to include other costs if you can justify their importance to the project.

Ineligible Costs

  • Labour costs of trainees or graduates supported by other public funds
  • Labour costs of management, in the absence of a reliable calculation of the time spent on project
  • Shareholder employees paid by dividends
  • Input VAT (unless non-recoverable from HMCE)
  • Bad debts
  • Interest and service charges
  • Inflation and contingency allowances
  • Land and buildings (purchased)
  • Capital equipment and tooling for manufacturing production
  • Fees for Independent Accountant's Certificates required by 'Research Grant for R&D' final and 'Development Grant for R&D' first and final grant payments
  • Director's fee charges as consultant to their own business
  • Profit earned by subsidiary or associated business on work sub-contracted
  • Costs of printing operating, service and maintenance manuals
  • Advertising and entertaining
  • Product or process marketing, market surveys, research and sales costs
  • Training costs related to sales and distribution of developed product or process
  • Certification costs
  • Free of charge (in kind) work, materials or services
  • Work undertaken prior to the agreed project start date and after end of the project
  • Please note: Proof of Market costs are limited to staff pay, general overheads, consultancy and a maximum of £2000 of intellectual property costs.