Innovate UK Funding

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Jane Lambert

The start of a new year is when many new businesses and projects within existing businesses are launched. Such initiatives usually need funding and an important source of funds is Innovate UK.  Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation ("UKRI") which was established by s.91 (1) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. Its website states that it "convenes, catalyses and invests in close collaboration with others to build a thriving, inclusive research and innovation system." 

Innovate UK connects businesses to partners, customers and investors that can help them turn ideas into commercially successful products and services and business growth.  Since its establishment, it has invested £2.5 billion in 8,500 organizations which investment is estimated to have created 70,000 jobs and added £18 billion of value to the British economy (see the "About Us" page of the Innovate UK website). A spreadsheet listing all Innovate UK's funded projects and some typical case studies can also be accessed through that site.

A good starting point for anyone seeking funding is Innovate UK's Guidance for Applicants page of UKRI's website.  The General Guidance page contains an overview and provides links to the following information:

• Funding opportunities
• Before you start an application
• Your application
• What happens after you have submitted your application
• What happens if you are successful
• Funding rules
• Categories of research and development
• Other funding opportunities, and
• Updates to general guidance.

The best way to learn about current funding opportunities is to sign up for Innovate UK's newsletter.   This month's edition contains news on the Made smarter innovation: sustainable smart factory, Automotive Transformation Fund expression of interest: round 17. Innovate UK smart grants: October 2021, NATEP helping SMEs innovate in aerospace and Early ideas to improve the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics. There is also information on Small Business Research Initiative projects.

Established businesses can access assistance through their trade associations, local chambers of commerce, local enterprise partnerships in England, Business Wales in Wales and similar organizations in Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Individuals who are not yet in business should approach the British Library's Business and Intellectual Property Centre or its national network of local partners.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during normal office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

Resources for Inventors in the West Midlands

The region known as "the West Midlands" consists of

• the metropolitan county of the West Midlands with its metropolitan boroughs of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton,
• the shire counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire and
• the unitary authorities of Hereforshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and Stoke-on-Trent.

The region covers an area of just over 13,000 square kilometres and has a population of 5.27 million.

Regional Development

The regional development agency for the West Midlands is Advantage West Midlands. This will be abolished with all the other RDA by March 2012. However, proposals for local enterprise partnerships have been accepted for:

• Birmingham and Solihull with East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth
• Black Country
• Coventry and Warwickshire
• Stoke and Stafforshire
• The Marches, and
• Worcestershire.

Angels

There are at least two local business angel networks:

• Central England Business Angels ("CEBA") of Henley in Arden; and
• MINERVA of the University of Warwick University science park.

Clinics

Local patent attorneys offer free consultations at Birmingham Central Library in conjunction. NIPC Clinics will also introduce inventors and their investors, lenders and professional advisors to local patent and trade mark attorneys, business advisors, product design consultants, lawyers and others.

Community Development Finance Institutions

There are at least 6 community development finance institutions in the West Midlands:

• Aston Reinvestment Trust of Birmingham;
• Black Country Reinvestment Society of Wolverhampton Science Park;
• Coventry & Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust;
• East Lancs Moneyline of Staffordshire;
• Impetus Rural Reinvstment in the Marches; and
• StreetUK of Birmingham.

Inventors Clubs

There are inventors clubs in Birmingham, Kingswinford and Malvern.

Professional Advice

Members of NIPC West Midlands offer specialist advice and advocacy on intellectual property, information technology, telecommunications, media, entertainment and competition law. We can be reached on 0121 286 1551 or through our national contact form.

Further Information

Further information on inventors resources in the West Midlands will be published on the Inventors Club website.

Local Enterprise Partnerships: A Great Resource

Lorna Gibbons. local economic evidence coordinator of The South West Observatory publishes a great blog on local enterprise partnerships ("LEP") called Economic Development.

Particularly useful is her post of 7 June 2011 on BIS LEP Contact Information. This gives names, phone numbers, email addresses and areas of every contact in every LEP in the kingdom. This supplements another great post the previous day "Everything you need to know about each LEP .... contact and priorities where available".

Here's a sample entry for Leeds City Region, my local LEP:

"Website: http://www.leedscityregion.gov.uk/LEP.htm

Linkedin: Leeds City Region LEP

Twitter: @LeedsCityRegion

Event Leeds City Region LEP Summit
9 September 2011 Royal Armouries, Leedshttp://www.leedscityregionsummit2011.com/summit/home.cfm Twitter event hashtag #lepsummit2011

Alternative contact lcr@leedscityregion.gov.uk or calling the Leeds City Region Secretariat on 0113 2474227.

May Newsletter: http://tiny.cc/vgw6l

Board members:

http://www.leedscityregion.gov.uk/lepboard.htm

Key Objectives for the LEP – an Integrated Strategy and Investment Plan

The LEP Board considered a report on integrating Leeds City Region existing strategies to produce a single streamlined strategy and investment plan to help guide the activity of both the LEP and Leaders Boards effectively. Each Board would in turn produce a Strategic Delivery Plan.

This approach will ensure that both Boards have a single, clear focal point of reference in terms of the Partnership’s vision and mission objectives.

The draft will be published for consultation and presented at the LEP Summit on the 9th September 2011."

Altogether it's great stuff.

Resources for Inventors in North West England

North West England consists of the counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. It includes the Greater Manchester and Merseyside metropolitan areas as well as Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, Carlisle, Chester, Lancaster, Preston and Warrington The region covers just under 14,165 square kilometres and has a population of just over 8.85 million.

Regional Development

The North West Regional Development Agency has co-ordinated regional development until now. This agency will be abolished together with the other regional development agencies by March 2012. Proposals have been accepted for local enterprise partnerships for Cheshire and Warrington, Cumbria, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region.

Business Link

Business Link North West is based at Brian Johnson Way, Preston, PR2 5PE, Tel 0845 00 66 888. There are local advisers throughout the region.

Clinics

The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys usually holds patent clinics in Liverpool and Manchester Central Libraries but both of these libraries are closed for refurbishment. The Manchester clinic has moved temporarily to Manchester City Library at Elliott House, 151 Deansgate and meets every third Thursday. The Liverpool clinic is still looking for a new venue. Blackburn and Darwen Library arrange occasional clinics with local patent agents at Blackburn Central Library on request.

Funding

There is an angel network known as North West Business Angels.

There are no less than seven community development finance institutions in North West England:

• BBV (Bolton Business Ventures Ltd.);
• Business Finance Solutions;
• CART (Cumbria Asset Reinvestment Trust);
• East Lancs Moneyline;
• Lancashire Community Finance;
• Merseyside Special Investment Fund; and
• Moneyline Greater Manchester.

Inventors Clubs

There are inventors clubs in Blackburn (Ideas North West), Liverpool and Manchester. Like the Liverpool patent clinic, the Liverpool Inventors Club is looking for a temporary home pending the refurbishment of Liverpool Central Library.

Libraries

There are Patent Information Centres (also known as "PATLib libraries) in Liverpool and Manchester Central Libraries. Both libraries are being refurbished. The Manchester patent library has moved temporarily to City Library at 151 Deansgate. Blackburn Central Library operates an Inventors Information Point with an extensive collection of resources.

Professional Advisers

NIPC was the first and remains the only intellectual property chambers outside London was established in Manchester in 1997. Alex Khan is based in Manchester.

Janet Bray who practises from Hebden Bridge is on our patent attorneys' panel.

Michael Sandys and Joanne Shelley are solicitors specializing in intellectual property.

Michael Swift is a chartered accountant with experience of advising and assisting start-ups.

Jonathan Butters is an experienced product design consultant.

Further Information

We have a page on inventors' resources in North West England on the Inventors Club website

which we shall expand and update as and when we can. We have an Inventors Club group on Linkedin which covers developments affecting inventors throughout the UK. You can of course also join the Inventors Club if you want. The membership rules are here. There is no subscription but we may charge for special services such as showcasing inventions and access to professional services. Anyone who wishes to contact us should call us on 0161 850 0080 or use our online form.

Resources for Inventors in the East Midlands

The East Midlands covers the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northanptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland. According to Wikipedia the region's population is just under 4.2 million and its land area is 15,627 square kilometres. Major towns and cities include Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Northampton.

Regional Development

The East Midlands Regional Development Agency is the regional development agency for the East Midlands. Proposals for local enterprise partnerships have been accepted for Derby and Derbyshire and Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, Leicester and Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and the South East Midlands.

Inventors Clubs

There does not appear to be an inventors' club in the East Midlands as yet. However, the Sheffield Inventors Group welcomes members from Derbyshire and the Birmingham and Black Country clubs are within comfortable driving distance of most of Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. Should inventors from the East Midlands wish to set up their own club, we should be glad to help. Call us on 0115 824 9090 or use our online contact form.

Clinics and Libraries

There are no PatLib libraries and hence no CIPA clinics in the East Midlands. However, each of the county and district council library authorities have good on-line and printed business information resources. If anybody from the East Midlands wants advice on any aspect of inventing he or she can contact our clinic using this form. We shall put him or her in touch with a local professional advisor.

Business Advice

Business Link East Midlands is at Innovation House, Riverside Park, Raynesway, Derby, DE21 7BF Tel: 0845 058 6644.

Funding

East Midlands Business Angels Ltd. is the local angel network. There are three community development finance institutions in the region:

• Derby Loans
• First Enterprise, and
• Leicester Moneyline.

Professional Advisers

So far we have one panellist in the East Midlands, the trade mark attorney Mr. Philip Cooper of VeryMark.

There are several well known firms of patent and trade mark attorneys as well as law firms that specialize in intellectual property in the region but we do not yet know any of them well enough to recommend to recommend to private inventors with limited budgets. We advise inventors to shop around and tell us what you find.

Further Information

We have a page on Inventors' Resources in the East Midlands on the Inventors Club website which we shall expand and update as and when we can. We have an Inventors Club group on Linkedinwhich covers developments affecting inventors throughout the UK which you can join. You can of course also join the Inventors Club if you want. The Membership Rules are here. There is no subscription but we may charge for special services such as showcasing inventions and access to professional services. Anyone who wishes to contact us should call us on

0115 824 9090 or use our online contact form

Resources for Inventors in the East of England

This is the second of my regional surveys of resources for inventors.

The East of England covers the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. According to Wikipedia the region has a population of 5.39 million in a land area of 19,120 square kilometres. It is home to one of the world's greatest research universities. According to the Intellectual Property Office there were 1,844 patent applications from the region in 2009 placing it third behind South East England and London with 2,777 and 2,752 respectively. Its regional development agency is the East of England Development Agency. Three local enterprise partnership proposals have been accepted from the East of England, namely Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough, Hertfordshire and Kent Greater Essex and East Sussex.

Inventors Clubs

I am aware of only one inventor's club in the region. That is CHASE (the Cambridge High Tech Association of Small Enterprises) in Cambridge. The Association meets on the first and third Tuesdays of most months, holds an annual dinner and an occasional conference. Further information can be obtained from Jeff Veil on 01223 721499. I would have expected to find inventors clubs in Bedford, Chelmsford, Colchester, Hatfield, Ipswich, Luton, Norwich and Southend. If inventors in any of those cities want us to help them set up an inventors club they should call us on 01603 343030 or contact us through this form.

Clinics and Libraries

There are no PatLib libraries and hence no CIPA clinics in the East of England. However, each of the county and district council library authorities have good on-line and printed business information resources. If anybody from the East of England wants advice on any aspect of inventing he or she can contact our clinic using this form. We shall put him or her in touch with a local professional advisor.

Business Advice

The HQ of the local Business Link is at Zenith Court in Hatfield. There are local Business Link offices in each of the major towns and cities of the region. Advice and mentoring is also available from Keith McCallum who holds the Business Doctors franchise for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.

Funding

Eastern Capital Alliance is a local angel network. There are three community development finance institutions in the region:

• Foundation East in Bury St Edmunds; and
• NWES and WEETU in Norwich.

Professional Advisers

There are several well known firms of patent and trade mark attorneys as well as law firms that specialize in intellectual property in the region but we do not yet know any of them well enough to recommend to recommend to private inventors with limited budgets. We advise inventors to shop around and tell us what they find,

Further Information

We have a page on Inventors Resources in the East of England on the Inventors Club website which we shall expand and update as and when we can. We have an Inventors Club group on Linkedin which covers developments affecting inventors throughout the UK which you can join. You can of course also join the Inventors Club if you want. The Membership Rules are here. There is no subscription but we may charge for special services such as showcasing inventions and access to professional services. Anyone who wishes to contact us should call us on 01603 343030 or send us an email.

Government's Strategy on Growth published at last

The Coalition's long awaited white paper on local growth has now been published and can be downloaded here. It is intended to implement part of the government's strategy to stimulate growth set out in its green paper "A Strategy for Sustainable Growth" published last July.

The Coalition's strategy is very different from that of the outgoing Labour government's which was based on funnelling funds through the Regional Development Agencies and Business Link networks. The new strategy focuses on creating conditions for growth and promises very little money apart from infrastructure improvements and the Regional Growth Fund.

As most of us are used to a more corporatist model, the government's thinking is hard to follow. Those who want to understand the thinking behind it should read the Department for Business Innovation and Skills economic paper "Understanding Local Growth" also published this month. Without an economics background, this paper is hard going, but the important bit is the table on page 10. That shows that productivity per person has actually fallen during the years in which the RDAs existed in every region except London and the South-East and that growth has been appreciably slower outside those regions. That paper taken as a whole has convinced me of the need to try something else.

For most readers of this blog the most important things to mention are local enterprise partnerships ("LEPs") and the Regional Growth Fund ("RGF"): -

• LEPs I discussed local enterprise partnerships in my article of 21 Oct "Local Enterprise Partnerships begin to take Shape". In its white paper the government announced that it had accepted 24 of the 62 proposals to establish local enterprise partnerships. These include the proposals from "city regions" like Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield as well as those from predominately rural areas like Cornwall, Cumbria and the Marches. It will be from those local enterprise partnerships and any business support services that they may sponsor that the private inventors, who now look to Business Link and the RDAs, will obtain advice and help on commercializing their inventions in future.
• RGF: The money that used to be channelled through the RDAs will now come through the RGF which is now accepting bids (see "Information for Applicants" and the application form guidance). It should be noted that there will be a lot less money about than before and that it will be targeted.

I shall keep readers of this blog informed of developments.

Local Enterprise Partnerships begin to take Shape

At their meeting at Bradford on 29 June 2010. the Cabinet resolved to abolish the Regional Development Agencies ("RDAs") and replace them with Local Enterprise Partnerships ("LEPs").

The Ministers' Letter

That same day Dr. Vince Cable, the President of the Board of Trade etc, and Mr. Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, sent a letter to local government and business leaders inviting them to arrange for local groups of councils and business leaders to come together to develop proposals for such LEPs.

LEPs' Powers

It is clear from the ministers' letter that these new LEPs can be nothing like as powerful as the RDAs they are intended to replace. For a start, attracting inward investment, sector leadership, business support and innovation and access to funds are to be handled nationally while regional strategy is to be abandoned altogether. The new partnerships will be left with such weighty matters as planning, housing, local infrastructure and business startups. The letter envisaged equal representation for local government and business on the governing bodies and that those organs would usually be chaired by a prominent local businessman.

Deadlines Missed and Kept

Dr. Cable and Mr. Pickles promised a white paper on "sub-national" (the adjective "sub-national" apparently being Newspeak for "regional") growth by the summer. As it is now October that has clearly not happened Even though the government has missed its own deadline it insisted on submissions from local authority and business syndicates by 6 September. This was a very tight deadline slightly over 2 months from the original letter that appears to have taken no account of annual holidays.

Proposals Received So Far

Remarkably, nearly 60 proposals were received by that deadline. Some of these have been published on the grandiloquently named Department for Business, Innovation and Skills's ("BIS") website. If the ministers had seriously hoped that groups of local authorities and businesses would get together, they must be disappointed. For the Greater Newcastle conurbation there have been no less than 4 separate proposals from Northumberland and North Tyneside, Newcastle and Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland and County Durham. Several proposals cover the same area: the Greater Manchester metropolitan authorities and the Peel Group have both submitted proposals for Manchester and there are separate proposals for the Gatwick Diamond and the "Brighton and Hove, Croydon, the Gatwick Diamond and West Sussex - Coast to Capital" project. Instead of local collaboration the proposals appear to show a revival of local rivalries.

Funding

Some clues as to funding that may be available after the dismantling of the RDAs come from two consultation papers which BIS did get round to publishing over the summer:

• a green paper on a £1 billion regional growth fund announced by the Cabinet in Bradford "to encourage private sector enterprise, including social enterprise, and capacity, and in doing so create opportunities for people and places to adjust to reductions in public spending"; and
• "Financing a Private Sector Recovery" (Cm 7923) a consultation on access to funding in the private sector.

It is clear from those consultation documents that only money that could be available to the LEPs will be the regional growth fund. My initial view is that £1 billion spread over 8 of the 9 regions of England is not very much. Such a sum is unlikely to create much opportunity in places where there are likely to be massive public expenditure cuts.

Local Business Advice

One of the first casualties of the abolition of the RDAs are likely to be local and regionalBusiness Link services. In an interview with Jason Hesse on the Real Business website, Mark Prisk, the Business Minister, announced:

“We’re going to wind down the Regional Development Agencies, and as part of those, we’ll be winding down the regional Business Link contracts.”

These will be replaced by a state funded online service - presumably the existing Business Link website possibly under the "Solutions for Business" brand - and greater use of existing service providers such as chambers of commerce and local authorities. The proposal for a new business information service to be provided by thee British Library, NESTA, Newcastle City Council and Northumbria University is probably something like the model Mr. Prisk had in mind (see "Mark Prisk announces new business advisory service" on the Real Business website).