Please ensure that you read and understand these Terms and Conditions of the Digital Accelerator Scheme before signing and submitting an application. By accepting the declaration, you are confirming that you understand the full terms and conditions of this scheme.
Acceptance onto the scheme does not guarantee automatic receipt of grant funding. The grant can only be applied for when both masterclass workshops have been completed, the Digital Growth Plan has been completed in a 1:1 workshop and an application has been deemed satisfactory by the panel.
Grant applicants will need to outline their business vision, goals and strategy as well as state what they intend to spend the grant money on and what tangible outcomes they expect to achieve as a result of the grant funding.
No prior commitment to suppliers should be undertaken prior to the grant award being confirmed. Any costs that have been incurred or committed to prior to the grant approval date will not be eligible for grant support.
Your preferred supplier(s) must be the one(s) that you will use as the grant will be awarded on the basis of these suppliers. Any request to change suppliers once the grant has been awarded will need to be submitted to the programme coordinators at the University of Lincoln in writing and be accompanied by the replacement quotation obtained from the new supplier. The request to change the supplier must be approved by the programme coordinators at the University of Lincoln, in writing, prior to a new supplier being appointed.
Full details of the amount of the grant award will be outlined in your grant offer email. Please note that whilst the grant amount can decrease due to lower costs, it cannot be increased once confirmed, despite what the final cost amounts may be.
The funding can be used as a contribution to a larger project where the applicant funds any remaining costs over the funding award, with no requirement to provide match funding.
A panel of judges will assess each grant application form and determine whether grant funding will be awarded. There will be no right to appeal, and businesses will be signposted on to other support schemes that are available. 100% of the grant funding will be provided after the applicant is successful at panel, which is planned for 15th February, 2022.
Grants will be allocated according to the impact that the grant is likely to have on the business, rather than on a first-come, first-served basis.
By accepting this grant, you are confirming that the grant will be used to meet the costs of the investment as per the quotation(s) that you have provided to support his application, and that no other public funding has been received to support the value of the project costs applied for.
Should the costs of the items purchased be of a lesser value to the value of grant funding paid to you, the University of Lincoln and City of Lincoln Council reserve the right to reclaim any difference in value.
If successfully awarded the grant, you will be required to provide copies of your business bank statement(s) and supplier invoice(s) to show the payments made, within 3 months of your acceptance to the programme. Failure to do so may result in claw back.
The University of Lincoln and the City of Lincoln Council will not accept deliberate manipulation and fraud. Any business caught falsifying their records to gain grant money will face prosecution and any funding issued will be subject to clawback.
The Digital Accelerator Scheme is a programme administered by the University of Lincoln in association with the City of Lincoln Council. In order to be eligible for the Scheme, businesses must be:
Expressions of Interest will be processed on a first come, first served basis. All Expressions of Interest must be received by no later than 23:59 on 3rd December, 2021. Failure to submit an Expression of Interest by this time will result in your failure to be considered for this scheme.
All Expressions of Interest are expected to have been reviewed by 7th December, 2021.
Applicants will receive an email notification which clearly confirms that they have been either successful or unsuccessful. Successful businesses will be emailed a longer application form along with guidance and information to help them complete the form.
The application form should be completed and returned by no later than 23:59 on Sunday 9th January, 2022.
The declaration must be signed by:
(a) The applicant(s) in his or her or their personal capacity;
(b) Where the declaration is being signed on behalf of an incorporated body, such as a limited company
i. All partners, or directors of the incorporated body; or
ii. A partner or director of the incorporated body who is authorised to sign on behalf of the incorporated body; or
(c) Where the application is being signed on behalf of an unincorporated body
i. All partners, trustees, or an officer of an unincorporated body; or
ii. A partner, trustee, or officer who is authorised to sign on behalf of the unincorporated body
The United Kingdom is bound by its international commitments, including subsidy obligations set out in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU.
On Thursday 4 March new subsidy allowances were established for the business grants schemes. There are three subsidy allowances for this scheme set out below:
Where the Small Amounts of Financial Assistance Allowance has been reached, grants may be paid in compliance with the Principles set out in Article 3.4 of the TCA and in compliance with Article 3.2(3) of the TCA under the COVID-19 Business Grant Allowance (subsidies granted on a temporary basis to respond to a national or global economic emergency). For the purposes of these scheme rules, this allowance is £1,600,000 per single economic actor. This allowance includes any grants previously received under the COVID-19 business grant schemes and any State aid previously received under Section 3.1 of the European Commission’s Temporary Framework across any other UK scheme. This may be combined with the Small Amounts of Financial Assistance Allowance to equal £1,935,000.
Where an applicant has reached its limit under the Small Amounts of Financial Assistance Allowance and COVID-19 Business Grant Allowance, it may be able to access a further allowance of funding under these scheme rules of up to £9,000,000 per single economic actor, provided the following conditions are met:
If your business has reached its limit under the Small Amounts of Financial Assistance Allowance and COVID-19 Business Grant Allowance (£1,935,000), you are required to provide additional information to confirm eligibility under the Special Allowance to ensure eligibility to receive a grant.
Grants provided in excess of the Small Amounts of Financial Assistance Allowance may not be granted to applicants that were defined as an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ on 31 December 2019. In derogation to the above, grants can be granted to micro or small enterprises that were already in difficulty on 31 December 2019 provided that they are not subject to collective insolvency proceedings.
How is an Undertaking defined?
For the purposes of the rules on competition laid down in the Treaty an Undertaking is any entity engaged in an economic activity, regardless of its legal status and the way in which it is financed. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that all entities which are controlled (on a legal or on a de facto basis) by the same entity should be considered as a single undertaking. For the sake of legal certainty and to reduce the administrative burden, this Regulation should provide an exhaustive list of clear criteria for determining when two or more enterprises within the same Member State are to be considered as a single undertaking. The Commission has selected from the well-established criteria for defining ‘linked enterprises’ in the definition of small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and in Annex I to Commission Regulation (EC) No 800/2008 those criteria that are appropriate for the purposes of this Regulation.
The criteria are already familiar to public authorities and should be applicable, given the scope of this Regulation, to both SMEs and large undertakings. Those criteria should ensure that a group of linked enterprises is considered as one single undertaking for the application of the de minimis rule, but that enterprises which have no relationship with each other except for the fact that each of them has a direct link to the same public body or bodies are not treated as being linked to each other. The specific situation of enterprises controlled by the same public body or bodies, which may have an independent power of decision, is therefore taken into account.
A ‘single undertaking’ includes, for the purposes of this Regulation, all enterprises having at least one of the following relationships with each other:
Enterprises having any of the relationships referred to in points (a) to (d) of the first subparagraph through one or more other enterprises shall also be considered to be a single undertaking.
How is an Undertaking in Difficulty defined?
The definition under State Aid rules that should be used when assessing whether an undertaking constitutes an Undertaking in Difficulty is set out in the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), No 651/2014, Article 2, paragraph 18:
“‘Undertaking in difficulty’ means an undertaking in respect of which at least one of the following circumstances occurs:
A false or misleading statement made by the applicant may mean that approval will be revoked and any grant may be withheld or recovered;
This agreement is made directly between the applicant, City of Lincoln Council, and the University of Lincoln;
Full payment of goods and services remains the sole responsibility of the applicant.
