Heart of Suffolk

Mid Suffolk Town Centre Shopfront Scheme

Mid Suffolk District Council have launched a new grant scheme open to local businesses to apply for grant funding to help improve their existing premises. The scheme focuses on town centre shops or commercial properties within Mid Suffolk, with priorities including making vacant units more attractive to new occupiers, enhancing the aesthetic appeal and key frontages within town centres, encouraging increased footfall, and providing a vibrant and mixed retail offer. The fund supports shop improvements with a focus on high-visibility frontage works, including rebranding shops with new signage, vinyl graphics and signage, canopies, cladding, accessibility improvements, lighting, new windows/doors, shutters, external security, or reinstatement of traditional or historic features that have been lost. Priority areas include Eye, Debenham, Stowupland, Elmswell, Woolpit, Thurston, Needham Market, Great Blakenham, Claydon, and Stowmarket. The maximum grant is £10,000 per property with a 40% match funding requirement that can be decreased in exceptional circumstances. All payments are made at the end of the process; therefore, applicants need to fund the project fully themselves before any reimbursements are made. Funding cannot be used to pay for items purchased prior to the grant being determined.