Extra £1.5m to expand opportunities

Mar 8 2010 by Iain Laing, The Journal

A SCHEME to help budding entrepreneurs and business start ups in the Tees Valley to benefit from an extra £1.5m.

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council has secured the European Regional Development Fund cash to extend enterprise coaching services across 32 deprived wards, 22 in Redcar & Cleveland and 10 in Darlington, until 2013.

The ERDF investment will assist 1,800 more people with start up ideas and generate hundreds of new business referrals to the Business Link service in the two boroughs over the next three years.

The initiative aims to help increase numbers of new start up businesses in local areas by 300% a year and ensure that more than 80% of these new start up businesses survive more than 12 months.

It will target people who would not normally consider self employment as a career option and those who need intensive support to fulfil their aims of starting their own business such as the long term unemployed and young mothers.

The project has already received £1.5m from the European Union, £1.46m from the Redcar & Cleveland Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) and £60,000 from Darlington Borough Council.

Enterprise coaches will help prospective entrepreneurs explore financial requirements, gaps and possible sources of funding until they are ready to access mainstream business support via the Business Link service.

One North East chief executive Alan Clarke said: “The need for this service to be expanded across the area has been heightened by the recent developments at Corus and has been identified as a priority within the Tees Valley Industrial Programme.”