Completing an Expression of Interest (EOI) Form

South Nottinghamshire

LEADER Programme

Completing an Expression of Interest (EOI) form

This Fact Sheet is produced to help applicants complete an EOI form for LEADER funding.

The EOI can be accessed via this link: www.nottscc.gov.uk/leadersouth

There are several other sources of information on the South Nottinghamshire LEADER website which may also assist you - including the Applicants Handbook and the Local Development Strategy for the area.

However there is no substitute for a direct discussion with the Programme Officer who will be only too willing to help you establish if you are eligible to apply, provide guidance in developing your project and to assist you with any queries you may have on the application process.

Please contact:

Craig Edson, South Nottinghamshire LEADER Programme Officer on 0115 977 2686 or email

The Expression of Interest (EOI) stage

There is a two stage application process for LEADER. This Fact Sheet only covers the first stage – the EOI.

The EOI form provides the Local Action Group (LAG) and Programme Team with a summary of your project. If it is determined that the application is eligible and the application contains everything we need to know - you will be invited to proceed to the second stage and submit a full application.

Your project should therefore be sufficiently developed to have sufficient information to complete the Full Application – although time will be afforded to you between the outline decision and the deadline for full application submission.

For an overview of the Full Application process please contact the Programme Officer.

Information needed at the EOI stage

The EOI requests several key pieces of information and you must complete it in full and provide as much information as possible.

Assume that the LAG and the Programme Team knows nothing about what you want to do and take particular care in explaining any technical aspects of your proposal.

Remember this is your opportunity to start to make your case for us to “invest” in your project. Take this opportunity to showcase what you want to do, how you want to do it and when and any wider benefits of the grant investment.

The type of information that we require at the EOI Stage includes:

·  the location of the proposed project

·  a description of the project – what it will do

·  how it will be delivered

·  how much it will cost

·  who will benefit from it

·  how it will create jobs and increase business turnover

How the information is used

The information provided in the form is used to check that the applicant, project and costs are eligible. It’s also used to assess the application against the criteria set out in the Applicant Handbook and against the local priorities of the LAG

Please be clear and realistic about what the project can achieve - a full application may be rejected if it’s found that a project cannot achieve the targets described in the Expression of Interest (EOI).

It is not acceptable to simply state, “The project will be delivered in accordance with the LEADER Programme requirements,” as a response to any part of this application form. Applicants must clearly describe how they will meet these requirements.

How to fill out the EOI form

The application form is an excel spreadsheet.

Please complete all the questions in full. Please use sentence case, not block capitals.

This application form has been designed by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) and is being used nationally by all LEADER Programmes.

Useful Tips

The information requested in the form should be straight forward and notes are contained on the form itself– however, if you are unsure on anything, please contact the Programme Officer.

Here are some tips to assist you:

·  Applicant details – do not list your agent this is the applicant business only

·  Give the full name of the business/ organisation who will be receiving the grant. Where this is a registered company, this will be the full registered name of the business and will be the name in the annual accounts for the business. We will use this for all future correspondence including any contract should your grant be approved at Full Application stage.

·  Your business address must be the main postal address for your company and should link to any existing or future registration with the RPA

·  Make sure your telephone and email contacts are the main points of contact to ensure that you can be contacted about the application and to receive appropriate information – including the contract if you are successful

·  Question 6 refers to a Single Business Identifier number (SBI):

o  Please enter your Single Business Identifier (SBI) number if you already have one

o  If not – you will need one if invited to submit a Full Application. To do this you will need to register with the online Rural Payments service: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/register-for-rural-payments

·  Question 14 asks about Linked businesses - please review information contained in the Applicants Handbook for what is meant by this term. Do remember to include linked businesses where applicable in your calculations of the size of your business (please see below)

·  If you are working with an Agent or other intermediary you must advise us under Section 4 of the form. This is permissible but you can also gain advice from the Programme Officer.

·  If your project spans two LEADER Programme areas you must advise us in the EOI. If this is the case, early discussions with the South Notts Programme Officer is recommended together with their counterpart in the appropriate LEADER area

·  Please note some of your answers are restricted by maximum word counts.

·  Project Costs (Q 25) – All costs should be net of VAT, unless you are including irrecoverable VAT in your eligible project costs. Please enter data/information in the white cells only. Please DO NOT enter anything in the grey cells - they will automatically calculate figures.

o  When selecting the intervention rates for your project please be guided by Applicant Handbook and early discussion with the Programme Officer.

o  Non Grant Project Costs - If there are any costs that are integral to the project, but the applicant does not intend to include these in their grant application, enter the details of the item and costs here.

o  In the “Project Match Funding” table please enter details of the match funding you will be using in each year of the project.

If you are unsure on the percentage of grant that you may qualify for please contact the Programme Officer.

·  The proposed start date (Q 28) is the date that you intend to start work on the project and start incurring eligible costs. You cannot start any works, or commit to any costs until you have received a grant funding agreement with the agreed project start date.

·  The Completion Date refers to the end of the project activity and payments made. There will however be up to a five year monitoring period which follows the completion date. For more information on this please contact the Programme Officer.

·  Section 7 Outputs - These are the “direct and measurable products of a project as a consequence of project activities e.g. new jobs created”. Keep your projects realistic, achievable and proportionate to the size and nature of your project. You also need to be able to qualify your methodology underpinning the outputs that you have selected.

·  Section 8 Planning Permission - In planning the delivery of your proposed project, build in appropriate time to secure permissions for projects – e.g. planning permission. These have to be in place at the Full Application Stage

Other Checks and Definitions to assist you in completing your Outline Application

Size of a business

Some grants are only available to certain sizes of business. The LEADER Programme is specifically targeted at micro and small businesses and these are identified under the umbrella term SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises). The table below identifies the size definitions for the purposes of this grant and relates to the number of employees, turnover and balance sheet totals.

All businesses must meet the FTE employee limits as well as either the turnover or balance sheet totals.

Company category / Number of FTE employees / Turnover / Balance sheet total
Micro / Under 10 / AND / €2m (about £1.4 million) or less / OR / €2m (about £1.4 million) or less
Small / Under 50 / €10m (about £7.0 million) or less / €10m (about £7.0 million) or less
Medium-sized / Under 250 / €50 million (about £35 million) or less / €43 million (about £30 million) or less

For full details see of the SME definition please follow this link: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/business-friendly-environment/sme-definition/index_en.htm

What is an FTE employee?

·  Anyone who works a minimum of 30 hours per week counts as one FTE employee.

·  A person working 30 hours a week for 3 months of the year would be 0.25FTE employee.

·  FTEs include business partners and directors.

·  If any person, including a business partner or director, works more than 30 hours per week they still count as 1FTE employee.

Applicants should enter the number of employees of their business, as a full time equivalent.

Public Funding Received Since 2007

Under Q17 if an applicant has received any form of public funding since 2007, they need to provide details of this. This will enable the RPA to check the reliability of an applicant based on previous grant awards and subsequent project delivery.

Applicants must declare if they have received any European funding, including but not limited to:

·  European Social Fund (ESF)

·  European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

·  European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD)

·  European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund Structural Funds (EAGGF)

·  Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE)

·  England Rural Development Programme (ERDP)

·  Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF)

·  Forestry Commission

·  LEADER

Applicants must also declare if they have received any public sector funding from organisations including but not limited to:

·  a local authority

·  a Regional Development Agency (RDA)

·  Business Link

·  Objective 1

Submitting an Expression of Interest (EOI)

Once fully completed, EOIs should be submitted to the following email address

You should use the email address that you have listed in the application (Q5) unless you are using a consultant, agent or business manager to complete the application in which case they may submit the EOI from their email address, but the applicant email address entered in Q5 must be copied into the email. This is to demonstrate that the applicant consents to the submission of the EOI.

If the applicant email address is not copied into the email we cannot accept the application.

The EOI form must be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Excel attachment to an email. We will not be able to open application forms saved in formats that are not compatible with the version of Microsoft Excel used for the application forms. If we can’t open the application form, the application will be rejected.

If using Open Office Software to complete and save the application form, please note that it will be necessary to ensure that the document is saved using the Microsoft Excel (.xls) format to ensure that it is compatible with the systems the LAG uses. To do this:

·  To do this, select ‘Save As’ when saving the application form. The ‘Save As’ box will open, allowing the location for the document to be saved to be selected.

·  Then select the format for the document in the ‘Save as type’ box. Select the format type – Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP/2003 (.xls), if this has not been automatically selected, then click ‘Save’.

·  A dialog box may open asking the applicant to ‘Confirm File Format’. If this happens, confirm that the intention is to save the document using the Microsoft Excel file format.

We cannot accept any other format of electronic application submission, including PDF documents or scanned documents. We cannot accept any other format, for example but not exclusively, hard copy printed applications or hand-written applications.

Deadlines

The South Nottinghamshire LEADER Programme is OPEN to receive Expression of Interest forms at any time. Deadlines for submission of Full Applications will be discussed by the Programme Officer.