Call for Ealing’s Innovation Pioneers
Ealing Council is pleased to announce the launch of the Pioneers’ fund, which will provide innovation grants to local small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This exciting opportunity is designed to deliver targeted innovation grants to businesses in Ealing that are able to demonstrate a good prospect of accelerated growth and job creation with the support.
The fund will focus on the following specific sectors that are significant to the borough in terms of job creation potential and of strategic importance:
- Aviation/ logistics
- Food
- Creative/media and
- Retrofit/ Construction Tech
In all these sectors we are particularly interested in low carbon and/or circular economy innovations.
The grant is open to businesses that meet the following criteria:
- SMEs – companies that have not more than 250 employees, an annual turnover of not more than £25.9 million and a balance sheet of no more than £12.9 million in total
- Must be based in Ealing borough
- Collaborative applications are encouraged – for example with a client or supplier, an academic organisation, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
- Projects can last from 12 months up to a maximum of 18 months
- Projects must demonstrate a potential economic and/or employment benefit for Ealing.
Range of grants are available from £50,000 to £200,000 and we expect to pay six to nine grants.
Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, cabinet member for decent living incomes, said:
“We’re looking for innovative ideas to help us meet the borough’s ambition to support growth in key sectors, driven by businesses with a commitment to Good Jobs and supporting the transition to net zero.
“If you are in one of our priority sectors and have an idea for an innovation project in your business, we would love to hear from you.
“The project team is particularly keen to hear from smaller businesses who would benefit from the financial support and partnering opportunities afforded by innovation funding.
“All proposals will be carefully considered and the team will try to provide feedback to all parties submitting a full application. In addition, any ideas submitted will be treated as commercially confidential and we will respect fully any intellectual property of the originator, regardless of whether we choose to award a grant.”
What happens next
The fund is open to applications from Wednesday 10 November 2021.
Part A
To register your interest, please download an application form and fill out Part A (Project Outline).
This first stage of the application process requires submission of the following information in Part A of the application form for our consideration:
- A short 400-word description of the problem your idea is seeking to solve;
- Which sector category your innovation falls in: aviation/logistics, food or creative/media;
- A description of how the solution will work (ideas may range from internal business process innovations to customer facing product/ service developments);
- An estimate of the timeline and cost of the project (projects should take up to 18 months to deliver from April 2022);
- An idea of the potential partners you will need to involve (i.e. who will produce the product, if applicable – and state whether you would like the project team to introduce you to local academic partners); and
- An outline of the potential project benefits, including any current estimates of business turnover/ jobs growth potential.
We will respond within 72hrs with advice on whether you should proceed to a full application – stage two of the application process.
Part B
Before filling in Part B of the application, we recommend you wait for our response on Part A form so we can confirm the suitability of your proposal.
The call for proposals will close at 4pm on 31 December 2021. Then we will evaluate all applications. We will approve grants in principle by the end of January 2022, with payments made to recipients by 31 March 2022, subject to signing of grant agreements.
West London Business (www.westlondon.com) is supporting Ealing Council in managing the fund.
