New £6.6m pot to help fund 1,000 Mersey start-ups

THE European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) has teamed up with 17 organisations to provide £6.6m to help create 1,000 new businesses over the next two years.

The initiative, which is being led by Liverpool-based Social Enterprise North West (SENW), has a target of creating more than 850 new jobs, safeguarding a further 300 and growing the economy by £4.3m a year.

The project aims to engage with 2,730 people in Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley, St Helens and Sefton from now until June 2014, encouraging people to start their own ventures. Some of these will be social enterprises, but the money can also be used to help people with business ideas to create their own for-profit ventures, offering mentoring and support.

Some £3.3m of the cash has come through the ERDF, with the remainder through partner organisations such as The Women’s Organisation, The Prince’s Trust, Liverpool social enterprise Elect and Bootle-based Safe Productions.

SENW chief executive officer Val Jones said: “This is an extremely exciting programme to create real employment and businesses in the most deprived areas of Merseyside.

“Crucially, we are going out and actively encouraging people to think about business start- ups, whether they are out of work or in a job and want to branch out on their own.

Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd MP, said: “This initiative will create real and tangible jobs and vibrant small businesses that will drive forward the economy of Merseyside.”

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