Discover Funding Opportunities

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.

Rural England Prosperity Fund

The Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) is a capital-only fund offering support to small businesses and community infrastructure projects in rural England. The fund aims to improve productivity and strengthen the rural economy and rural communities. It provides grants of up to £10,000 per application for businesses and organizations within Babergh and Mid Suffolk districts, with exceptional grants of up to £15,000 for projects strongly supporting Net Zero Infrastructure or Farm Diversification priorities. The fund is a top-up to and complementary to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and succeeds EU funding from LEADER and the Growth Programme which were part of the Rural Development Programme for England. The fund operates at a 50% intervention rate, meaning projects must be match-funded at 50% of total project costs. All payments are made as reimbursements at the end of the process, so projects must be fully funded upfront. Priority areas include investment in net zero infrastructure, SME investments and diversification, farm diversification outside of agriculture, and visitor economy business expansion. For 2025/26, Babergh received £186,377 and Mid Suffolk received £246,455 in REPF allocations. All projects must be completed and grants claimed by 1 March 2026. Available funds are now extremely limited and close to fully committed. Potential applicants must first contact the Economic Development team on an invitation-only basis if their project meets the mandatory grant criteria, though funding availability cannot be guaranteed.