Deadline: 19-Dec-22
The Belfast City Council is pleased to announce the applications for Business Cluster and Community Grant Scheme to provide a rolling programme of one-off capital grants to Belfast-based community groups, charities, social enterprises and business collaborations for environmental improvement schemes in their area.
Funding Information
- Capital grants between £10,000 and £25,000 are available for environmental improvement schemes on Belfast’s arterial routes, in urban villages and local communities which:
- Support business operation
- Enhance physical spaces
- Increase civic participation and sense of ownership
- Encourage people to live, work, visit and invest in local areas.
Eligible capital costs
- These costs are eligible for funding.
- Minor capital works
- Shop frontage enhancements
- Awnings
- Capital purchases
- Street furniture
- Inclement weather canopies (standalone)
- Outdoor heaters
- Outdoor furniture
- Street planters
- Hand-sanitisation stations
- Outdoor play equipment
- Medium term capital investment
- Public realm works
- Meanwhile use of gap sites
- Creating or adapting spaces to enable creative and artistic activity
- Refreshing historic structures to add character and authenticity
- Community gardens
- Lighting schemes.
- Minor capital works
Eligibility Criteria
- If a business cluster applies, one organisation within the cluster must be named as the ‘Lead applicant’ on the application form. The Lead applicant and the other businesses in the cluster must sign a Lead Partner Agreement.
- Your application must:
- Clearly identify benefit for a specified area or cluster area of Belfast-based businesses – grants will not be given for single business use
- Benefit SME retail or hospitality businesses (including social enterprises and community-led groups)
- Demonstrate an ability to complete the environmental improvement scheme before 30 November 2023
- Where proposed capital works will use public space, you will need the relevant licences (for example a pavement café licence), permits or permissions (including land ownership). You are responsible for leading and conducting relevant stakeholder engagement, securing and supplying agreement from all directly affected stakeholders. This includes adjacent businesses or residents.
Ineligible Capital Costs
- These costs are not eligible for funding:
- Office space or administration costs
- Any costs which someone else is paying for, whether in cash or in kind
- Routine repairs and maintenance to buildings
- General improvements to public areas unless essential to the project
- Maintenance equipment or office equipment which is not essential to the project
- Any transport that is necessary for the project
- Buying a leasehold that ends in less than five years
- Running costs for the building or proposal after the project is finished
- Funds to build up a reserve or surplus, whether distributable or not
- Loan repayments
- Donations to general appeals.
For more information, visit Business Cluster and Community Grant.