£1m energy grant scheme launched to help West Yorkshire businesses

To help businesses navigate the cost of trading crisis, UMi was delighted to be awarded the task of delivering West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Energy Price Emergency Grant scheme.

A £1m fund for West Yorkshire businesses, the energy price emergency grant scheme offers 50% funding up to £5,000. This financial support can be used to buy a more efficient boiler or install new low-energy lighting, for example.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority wanted to respond quickly to support businesses in the region that is being hit hard by the rise in energy costs.

The challenge was to design the scheme and deploy public funding rapidly and in a fully compliant yet business-friendly manner.

UMi has a wealth of experience in this area, having designed and delivered many grant schemes across the UK. We delivered WYCA’s Kickstarting COVID emergency grant scheme successfully in 2021, and so WYCA knew that they could depend on us to pull out all the stops to make it easier for businesses to get the support they need.

We provided an online grant application portal that integrated with their website, hitting the launch deadline to have the site up and running within a week of the contract being awarded.

Paul Collins, Senior Service Manager (Clean Growth) said: “Based on our experience of working with UMi in the past, we were confident we could rely on the team to provide the right solution and mobilise the fund quickly, to get this essential support to the businesses that need it as quickly as possible. We’re delighted that this proved to be the case, with hundreds of applications received in the first week alone.”

Thanks to this partnership, West Yorkshire businesses have been able to access funds to help with energy bills now and improve their energy efficiency over the long-term.