Business Support & Funding

Westmorland and Furness Council’s grant finding tool for communities and businesses

The funding portal is designed to help communities and businesses easily locate available funding opportunities. The tool is part of the council’s ongoing commitment to support local business growth, innovation and development, and to enable community groups and others to flourish, making Westmorland and Furness a great place to live, work and thrive.

We encourage all community members, businesses, and organisations to explore the new grant finding tool and take advantage of the funding opportunities available. With this tool, users can search for available grants tailored to their specific needs and projects, streamlining the process of securing financial support. Click here to start exploring available funding, and navigate to either the community or business portal.

Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II

The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II offers a range of commercial finance options with smaller loans and debt finance from £25,000 to £2 million and equity investment up to £5 million. The fund covers the whole of the North, including rural, coastal and urban areas. 

Click here for more details.

Enterprising Cumbria – Cumbria Accelerator Westmorland & Furness

This programme provided support for aspiring entrepreneurs to develop their business ideas and innovations alongside provision of advice to existing businesses to identify opportunities to expand, grow and improve productivity and profits.

It supported over 200 new local entrepreneurs at various stages of their start-up journey, by offering free, one to one business advice with an experienced advisor, to help to explore opportunities to start new businesses, with a wider view to increase the number of sustainable new businesses in the local area. Additionally, over 400 existing SMEs were assisted to help overcome challenges, become more competitive and resilient and to consider opportunities for growth, whether this be to expand into new markets, adopt new innovations and ways of working, cut business costs or improve marketing campaigns to grow their customer base.

The programme awarded over £1m of grants for projects to boost business growth, protect and create jobs and start new businesses.

This project received £1,630,000 from Westmorland and Furness Council and the UK Government from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund up to March 2025. This programme will restart in April 2025 and run for one further year, further information and details of how to access support will be made available soon.

Cumbria Business Growth Hub – Rural Business Support

This project helped small and micro businesses in rural areas of Westmorland and Furness to support:

• Businesses to overcome challenges facing them and respond positively to opportunities
• Farming businesses to respond to the phasing out of the Basic Payment Scheme and wider challenges and opportunities including diversification

This included:

• Advice vouchers of up to £500, which can be used with an adviser of your choice – no match funding is needed but you can choose to add more
• Workshops to support growth and resilience and help you navigate the new subsidy regimes, delivered through The Farmer Network
• Adviser support through the Growth Hub’s team, including access to finance and hospitality specialists and more

The programme was delivered by Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, working with a number of partners, including the Farmer Network, Cumbria Tourism, Lake District National Park Authority and NFU. The programme awarded over £700,000 of capital grants to businesses for purchase of equipment and small scale infrastructure improvements to help grow, diversify, innovate and improve productivity.

This project received £1,016,387 from Westmorland and Furness Council and the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Rural England Prosperity Fund up to March 2025. This programme will restart in April 2025 and run for one further year, further information and details of how to access support will be made available soon.

Cumbria Social Enterprise Partnership – A Social Enterprise Zone for Westmorland and Furness

The Social Enterprise Zone aims to create the best possible conditions for new social enterprises and community businesses to form and for the existing sector to innovate and grow by providing a full wrap-around and bespoke service of business advice and guidance and grants for start-up costs, investment in new products and services, and to improve existing business premises.

This project received £528,447 from Westmorland and Furness Council and the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund up to March 2025. The programme will restart in April 2025 and run for one further year, further information and details of how to access support will be made available soon.

These projects are funded by Westmorland and Furness Council and the UK Government. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund provides £3.5 billion of funding for local investment by March 2026. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus.