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Am I Eligible?

Please note that the Northwest Regional Development Agency is not accepting any new grant applications, or processing existing ones, at the present time.

Government has required us to substantially reduce our expenditure and as a result we have embarked on a comprehensive project review, including how we provide financial support for the region's businesses.

We appreciate this may cause some uncertainty, particularly if you have an application underway; if you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact your usual Agency contact. More information is available on the NWDA website.

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.

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.