There are hundreds of live UK grant schemes at any one time — national, local and sector-specific. The hard part is finding the ones that fit. We do the sifting for you.
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Rarely because the business was not good enough. Far more often because the application went to a scheme the business was never eligible for, or missed a technical requirement that had nothing to do with merit — the wrong company size band, an activity outside the scheme's scope, a project that had already started, or a match-funding requirement the applicant could not meet.
That last one catches people repeatedly. Many schemes are match-funded: the grant covers a percentage of the project cost and you fund the rest, from your own resources or from borrowing. A £50,000 grant on a 40% intervention rate means finding £75,000 yourself. If that money is not available, the grant is not available either, however eligible you are.
The other structural trap is timing. Most schemes will not fund work that has already begun, and some will not fund anything you have already committed to contractually. Ordering the equipment and then looking for a grant to pay for it is the wrong order, and it is not recoverable.
A grant is not automatically tax-free. The treatment depends on what it is for. A revenue grant that contributes to running costs is generally taxable income. A capital grant toward an asset usually reduces the qualifying expenditure for capital allowances rather than being taxed directly, which changes the timing rather than the amount.
The reason to know this before you apply rather than after is that it changes the real value of the award, and it changes how it should be recorded. It is a conversation worth having with your accountant at the point of application, when it costs nothing, rather than at the year end when the treatment is already fixed by what you did.
Your Found Funding profile is matched against Swoop's panel of banks, alternative lenders, equity funds and grant agencies — one search instead of one application at a time.
Correct — a grant is non-repayable, which is what makes it worth the effort. Two caveats matter though. Many schemes are match-funded: the grant covers a percentage of eligible project cost and you fund the rest, so a 40% intervention rate on a £125,000 project means £50,000 of grant and £75,000 from you. And a grant is not automatically tax-free. A revenue grant contributing to running costs is generally taxable income; a capital grant toward an asset normally reduces the expenditure qualifying for capital allowances instead. Neither makes a grant a bad deal, but the headline figure is not the net figure.
Far better when you only apply to schemes you are genuinely eligible for, which is the whole point of filtering first. Applications rarely fail because the business was not good enough — they fail on eligibility, on a technicality nobody spotted, or on match funding that was never realistically available. Location, size band, sector and what the money is for are all hard filters rather than guidelines, and a business one employee over a threshold is simply not eligible. Applying to three schemes that clearly fit beats applying to fifteen that do not, by a wide margin, and takes far less of your time.
Anything from a few weeks for a small local scheme to several months for a competitive national one, plus a further gap before money actually reaches your account. That is why grants should be lined up before you need the money rather than when you do. The timing trap that catches people is more serious than slowness: most schemes will not fund work that has already started, and some will not fund anything you have already contractually committed to. Ordering the equipment and then looking for a grant to pay for it is the wrong order, and there is no retrospective route once the spend is committed.
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