The Great Outdoors Challenge Fund Application Form

Please use the spreadsheet template ‘Project Budget and Delivery Plan’ to provide a detailed breakdown of your project income and expenditure for 2024/25 and 2025/26. Please also include 2026/27 budget to help TVCA understand the sustainability of your festival / event beyond TVCA investment.
Remember to upload your project budget at the end of the online application form.

The UK subsidy control regime began on 4 January 2023. It enables public authorities, including devolved administrations and local authorities, to give subsidies that are tailored to their local needs, and that drive economic growth while minimising distortion to UK competition and protecting our international obligations. Under the Subsidy Control Act 2022 ('the Act'), Tees Valley Combined Authority is under a legal obligation to design any subsidy to ensure that it complies with the Act. Applicants must confirm how much public funding the business or organisation has received in the last 3 financial years which has been classified as ‘De-Minimis’ under the former State Aid regime or Minimal Financial Assistance or Services of public economic interest under the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Subject to the amount stated applicants may be required to complete a Minimal Financial Assistance Notification or provide an independent subsidy control assessment from a legal professional. For more information on the UK Subsidy Control Regime please go to https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/subsidy-control-regime.

Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA) exemption specified in section 36 (1) of the Subsidy Control Act 2022 allows a company or business to receive up to £315,000 of public funding over a rolling three-year period. Please declare the full amount of public subsidies you have already received over the last 3 years (beginning with the date on which the Minimal Financial Assistance was given) under the Minimal Financial Assistance rules. The following is not a comprehensive list of the possible forms of subsidy. However, it should give an indication of the most common forms of subsidy, which you may have received over the past three years. Potentially any assistance from a public body might be a subsidy. Should you have any doubts on this matter, please contact the body from which the assistance was received.

• Grants from public bodies
• Loans from public bodies at favourable rates
• Loan guarantees from public bodies
• Differential tax benefits
• Grants from an investment trust (including charities) which may themselves have received the funds from a public body.
• Grants from a part publicly funded venture capital fund
• Publicly administered funds, even if the funds were originally not public such as the national lottery.
• Waiving or deferral of fees or interest normally due to a public body such as the waiving or deferral of rent or waiver of interest normally due on late payment of taxation or other costs to a public body
• Monopoly licences or guarantees of market share.
• Advertising via a public channel such as a tourist board or state-owned television
• Consultancy advice provided either free or at a reduced rate.
• Training provided either free or at a reduced rate. Aid for investment in environmental projects
• Provision of a free or reduced rate feasibility study for research and development or other assistance with research and development
• Purchase of public land or property at a less than market rate
• Benefiting from the provision of infrastructure where your organisation was pre-identified as a beneficiary.

I declare that the amount of subsidy received by the organisation over the last three years is as follows:

Please consent to TVCA undertaking financial due diligence checks using the information provided in this form. TVCA will need undertake financial due diligence on eligible organisations that pass initial assessment on the organisation and its officers and will provide the TVCA Creative Place Team with a risk assessment to inform the final decision. These due diligence checks will be commensurate and dependant on size and type of organisation. We may need to ask you for additional information at this stage.

This may include:

• Authenticating the personal identities of persons with significant control and carrying out a financial/fraud risk assessment.
• Carrying out a general risk assessment of the organisation using Experian and Companies House records.
• Carrying out a financial viability assessment of each organisation using their accounts together with Experian and Companies House records.
• Carrying out a reputational risk assessment of each applicant.
• Validating grantees’ bank accounts using Experian and/or CreditSafe.

We may request additional documentation in order to complete these checks such as;

• Evidence of existing bank account
• Details of any person who has control of the business including the completion of a 'fit and proper person' declaration
• Subsidy control declaration (previously known as state aid)

TVCA grant funding is, as a rule, issued in arrears. However, we are aware that some of the businesses we support operate on a project-by-project basis without significant reserves/cash in the bank. Therefore, without advance funds delivery of the project would be difficult to cashflow.

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