Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total project costs between £150,000 and £4 million
• not exceed a grant request of £2 million
• have at least 50% of the total project costs shared by the SMEs, if collaborative
• start by 1 May 2023
• end by 30 April 2026
• last between 6 months and 36 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. If you have requested an overall grant of over £500,000, and your online application is successful at Stage 1, you may be invited to attend an interview.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarussian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

For collaborations, the lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Funding Costs

Up to £25 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If the majority of your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.

Of that 50% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

·80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic

·100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation