Cumbria Accelerator Westmorland and Furness

Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership has extended its Cumbria Accelerator service and is running a Westmorland and Furness focused programme to support 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.

The £1.6m programme is supporting 450 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.

The support will allow for 225 new businesses to be created, opening up the programme to offer small grants of up to £500 to help these business to realise their ambitions and develop further during their early days.

Additionally, 413 existing SMEs are being 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.

Since the programme launched in late 2023, 69 existing businesses have already been awarded grants of up to £20,000 helping to fund activities to boost business growth. These projects are helping to both protect existing jobs and create a number of new roles too.

The programme also has support to boost businesses which are looking to get involved in local supply chains, to benefit from the significant investment coming to Cumbria through big businesses such as BAE Systems at Barrow-in-Furness.

The programme runs until the end of January 2025 and any individuals thinking of starting a new business or existing businesses that want to access support should contact the Programme Manager, Leslie Rickerby, at [email protected] to start their support journey.