Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Business, Investment and Culture

The Cabinet considered a report of the Director of Business, Investment and Culture, that would also be considered by Council on 16^th June 2020, which sought approval for the Council to act as accountable body and guarantor for additional funding for European Structural Investment Fund Business Support.

Coventry City Council had secured an additional £9.28m in European Structural Investment Funds (ESIF) which would allow four key business support programmes to be extended until June 2023. 

ESIF included both the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF). ERDF was designed to fund economic development projects and support the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in a modern economy. ESF was designed to support individuals who were employed to upskill and progress in their career.

The four programmes that had secured additional funding included three ERDF Programmes and one ESF programme. The ERDF Programmes, Business Support; Green Business and Innovation would seek to address the barriers to growth faced by existing SME’s; support the development of new business start up’s; assist SME’s to improve their energy efficiency levels and support SME’s to develop and test new products and technologies. The ESF Skills 4 Growth would work with SME’s to identify skills gaps in their employees and address them through targeted training.

This additional funding would also play a key role as the economy began to recover after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The current ERDF Programmes were due to come to an end in December 2021 and the ESF Programme in June 2020 (ESF). In view of this, the Council submitted bids for extensions to the ERDF programmes and a new ESF Skills 4 Growth Programme which had now been approved.

Across all the Programmes the amount totalled £9.28m which represented 43% of the £21.6m funding made available in this round of Calls.

The Council had already taken a leadership role in bringing partners together from across the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area to develop projects and programmes that would lead to greater economic growth across the City and the sub-region. The Council had an outstanding track record of securing, managing and delivering EU-funded programmes.

The report provided information on each of the bids and requested approval for the Council to act as accountable body and guarantor for the funding programmes.

The Cabinet agreed that the Council be recommended to:

1)  Approve the acceptance and drawdown of the grant funding totalling £9.28m (£8.12m for European Regional Development Fund and £1.16m for European Social Fund) from European Structural Investment Fund to be utilised in delivering the City’s priorities as set out in this report.

2)  Delegate authority to the Director of Business, Investment and Culture and the Director of Finance, following consultation with the Director of Law and Governance and the Cabinet Member for Jobs and Regeneration, to negotiate final terms and approve entry into:

a)  the grant funding agreement for the extensions to secure the European Regional  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4