The provision of wrap around consultancy to support SMEs participating in the Humber and York & North Yorkshire ERDF Funded SparkFund or Flood Resilience Innovation Centre (FLIC) programmes. We are seeking responses to this tender which provide costs for short term interventions with SparkFund or FLIC Beneficiary SMEs in units of whole days on a pro-rata basis. Services will be called off in whole or part days, specifically quarter and half days, and will relate to specific needs of businesses as defined within the mini-competitions Further details can be found here: https://supplierlive.proactisp2p.com/Account/Login

SparkFund is a business support and grant programme which is available to Small & Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) located in either the Humber or York & North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) areas. The total value of the programme is £15.1m and it is in receipt of £8.4m of ERDF grant funding.

SparkFund is the brand name for a programme made up of three discreet strands of support, these are:

Innovation Vouchers: to enable beneficiary SMEs to secure specialist innovation support (up to £17,500 maximum grant value). Such support will encourage and stimulate demand from SMEs to engage in innovation activity and access the expertise on offer from the knowledge base. It will help build the innovation capacity of SMEs by supporting proof of market and technical feasibility studies, early stage proof of concept and prototyping work as well as intellectual property protection.

Grants for Research & Development: to enable beneficiary SMEs to secure specialist innovation support (up to £44,300 maximum grant value). Such support will encourage and stimulate demand from SMEs to engage in innovation activity and access the expertise on offer from the knowledge base. It will help build the innovation capacity of SMEs by supporting proof of market and technical feasibility studies, early stage proof of concept and prototyping work as well as intellectual property protection.

Low Carbon Grants for Research & Development: to enable beneficiary SMEs to secure specialist innovation support (up to £42,250 maximum grant value). This activity will encourage and stimulate demand from SMEs to engage in low carbon innovation activity and access the expertise on offer from the knowledge base. It will help build the innovation capacity of SMEs by supporting proof of market and technical feasibility studies, early stage proof of concept and prototyping work as well as intellectual property protection.

We are seeking responses to this tender which provide costs for short term interventions with SparkFund Beneficiary SMEs in units of whole days on a pro-rata basis. Services will be called off in whole or part days, specifically quarter and half days, and will relate to specific needs of businesses as defined within the mini-competitions

FLIC is a research and innovation support programme which is available to Small & Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) located primarily in the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area. The project can also support SMEs based in other national Transition regions. The total value of the programme is £3.4m and it is in receipt of £1.9m of ERDF grant funding.

The FLIC project began in April 2019 and is due to end its delivery on 31 December 2021, the financial end date for the programme is 28 February 2022 and the practical end date is 30 June 2022.

The aim of the FLIC project is to stimulate regional SME innovation in the prevention and mitigation of flood risk. FLIC will establish an innovation structure to support the development of new or improved services, processes and products that will improve efficiency of response where flood events still occur.