Business development consultancy services

Tender description

Worcestershire. Business Start Up AND High Growth Start Up Programme. Sustainable economic growth and business growth is a key priority for the County Council, the district councils and the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership. Set out in our corporate plan the Open for Business strategy focuses on ‘rebalancing’ Worcestershire's local economy through a series of measures aimed at encouraging and supporting private sector investment, business and employment growth. Central to the long term fortunes of the County are a large proportion of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which account for over 90 % of all Worcestershire businesses and between them generate a high proportion of the County's Gross Value Added. New businesses will play a significant role in growing the Worcestershire economy, one of the fastest growing economies in the Country. The Start-Up and High Growth Start-Up support programme will run from June 2017 — July 2019. The programme aims to stimulate enterprise, develop new market opportunities, encourage investment, create new jobs and facilitate start-up and high growth start-up. The programme is being led by Worcestershire County Council with The Princes Trust and The University of Worcester acting as delivery partners and builds upon the successful Enterprising Worcestershire programme (2013 — 2015), which was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund). The project will provide business advice and support to individuals in Worcestershire in order to enable them to start new enterprises, provide additional advice and support to those and other early stage SMEs in the county, as well as deliver high growth support to a number of pre-start and early stage enterprises with high growth potential. The programme will be complimented by a grant fund which will be administered by the County Council and will offer grants of between 1 000 GBP and 5 000 GBP at a rate of 50 % match funding to eligible SMEs. The County Council is seeking to appoint service providers for the provision of business start-up and high growth start-up support, as part of the Enterprising Worcestershire Start -Up and High growth Start-Up Programme through funding from the European Regional Development Fund, County and District Councils. There are 3 specific strands of support detailed below and split into lots as follows: Lot 1 General Start-Up Support. Lot 2–5 Early Stage business Support. Lot 6 High Growth Start-Up Support. The target beneficiaries will be entrepreneurs or early stage SME's based within Worcestershire or seeking to re-locate to Worcestershire, that require support in order to start their businesses or to grow businesses already trading for less than 36 months. These will typically be small businesses that are trading or intending to trade 70 % business to business (B2B) however, business to consumer (e.g. retail) is permitted in terms of pre-start up support under Lot 1 (see extract from eligibility rules below). Our expectation is that the majority of clients will be operating business to business. The closing date for tender applications is 16:00 on Friday 21st April. For details of how to apply for any of the Lots within this tender please read the Tender Guidance Document. Please answer all questions that are applicable to the Lot or Lots that you are bidding for.