Monday 21 November 2022
We know right now that many businesses in Devon are struggling with rising costs, and that with the current climate following so quickly on the heels of the pandemic, some businesses, sadly, have closed.
Through the Heart of the South West Growth Hub, we are supporting local Devon businesses, helping them plan, adapt, and respond to their current challenges, as well as helping them find additional available support and business advice.
We've looked at the types of challenges that businesses are facing and have developed some new webpages to help.
Energy bills are one of the largest rising costs for businesses. The Heart of the South West Growth Hub has many resources from the government and independent sources with advice on how to lower your energy bills.
The largest opportunity for savings comes from the government's Energy Bills Relief Scheme. Energy suppliers will continue to directly apply reductions to the energy bills of all eligible businesses until Friday 31 March 2023.
If your business is struggling with rising costs, the Growth Hub can help to signpost you to trusted charities and organisations that provide debt advice and support. Business Debtline has an online calculator budget tool to help you prioritise your decision making and find the right debt solution for you.
Becoming net-zero can make your business more efficient, reduce waste energy costs and cut carbon emissions. The Growth Hub has tools to support businesses to come up with environmentally friendly solutions. Reaching net-zero now will also help your business adhere to future and current legislation. You may be entitled to environmental tax relief or be exempt from some taxes, or benefit from one of the green certification schemes for businesses.
This Thursday 24 November, Amazon and the Federation of Small Businesses, have arranged a free webinar for businesses. It's about how businesses can access different finance options, for example, crowd funding; capital finance; equity finance; and peer-to-peer lending.
Thursday's hour-long webinar starts at 11am.
The Growth Hub provides Thrive, which offers four modules of business advice, support and training to business owners. Thanks to funding this is completely free to eligible businesses in the Heart of the South West area. This course can involve HR webinars and 1-to-1 sessions, which many will find useful after the rising cost of and difficulties surrounding recruitment. There are also options for marketing, finance, and innovation amongst others.
Affordable funding is vital for small businesses, but it can be difficult to know what is required to get the best chance of securing finance.
This workshop on Friday 9 December 2022 at 10am will take you through how and where to apply for finance in order to raise your chances of a successful application.
It will cover the various loan and grant funding options that you can access; what information lenders will require from you; what your bank manager (or other investor) will want to see and how you should present that information in order to obtain the loan / grant and the best terms available.
We will also discuss current grant funding opportunities, mostly outside of Exeter.
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