Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (National): Sir Ian Wrigglesworth encourages business to bid for share of funding for jobs and growth

Sir Ian Wrigglesworth will be in Dudley, Staffordshire today (Monday) at a road show to promote the second round of the Regional Growth Fund and encourage bidders to compete for a share of £950m.

Sir Ian will speak about the importance of economic growth and the role of the Regional Growth Fund. He will then take questions about the process of submitting high-quality bids that offer the potential to create new jobs.

More than 150 businesses and organisations are expected to attend the third in a series of road shows at the Copthorne Hotel and more than 1,000 are expected to attend the series of road shows over the next few weeks.

The Regional Growth Fund has been designed to:

• provide support for projects that can drive sustainable economic growth and create new private sector jobs; and
• particularly help communities that are currently dependent on the public sector make the transition to private sector-led growth and prosperity.

Sir Ian is the deputy chair of the Independent Advisory Panel, which will consider all bids for funding and make recommendations to Ministers, led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, about which should be supported. Lord Heseltine is the chair of the panel, which consists of a team of academics, business and civic leaders.

Sir Ian Wrigglesworth said:

“I am delighted to be here in Dudley to promote the regional growth fund and highlight the aims and the benefits of this kind of investment.

“The aim of the fund is to support the vision of businesses, entrepreneurs and private-public partnerships to create new jobs and economic growth in their area.

“I hope the attendees at this road show have been inspired to think strategically about how the fund can support growth in their community and take advantage of this opportunity to help shape the economic future.”

The second round of the Regional Growth Fund opened to bids on April 12 and will close at midday on July 1. The second round will aim to allocate around £950m – the bulk of the £1.4bn fund.

Ministers announced in April that there were 50 successful bidders from the first round of the Regional Growth Fund. These bidders will share £450m if they pass a process of due diligence.

Notes to editors

1. More details about the Regional Growth Fund, submitting a bid and future road shows can be found here: www.bis.gov.uk/rgf

2. Due to the commercial sensitivities of the bids, BIS will not be publishing details of the bids submitted. Statistics on the number of bids received by region, local enterprise partnership and level of funding requested will be available once all the bids have been received.

3. All successful bids are subject to a due diligence process before final allocations of funding are awarded. Provisional funding allocated to any bids that do not successfully pass the due diligence process will be made available in a further round of the Regional Growth Fund.

4. BIS's online newsroom contains the latest press notices, speeches, as well as video and images for download. It also features an up to date list of BIS press office contacts. Seehttp://www.bis.gov.uk/newsroom for more information.

Contacts

NDS Enquiries 
Phone: For enquiries please contact the issuing dept 
ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk