Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she considered including the West Somerset Opportunity Area in the South West region for the DCMS Create Growth Programme Competition 4.

The Create Growth Programme supports high-growth creative businesses and SMEs in twelve English regions outside London to scale up and become investment ready. This is delivered through three strands of support - bespoke business support, financial support and investor capacity building activities.

The financial support, including that offered through Competition 4, awards grants to support innovation projects to individual businesses who are registered or operational within one of the twelve participating regions. Participating regions were determined by a competitive application process to appoint local area partnerships.

The West of England and Cornwall local area partnership is a participating region in the programme. That partnership covers the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority area (ie Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset), North Somerset, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, but does not include the West Somerset Opportunity Area. There are currently no plans to increase the number of participating regions.

We would encourage all interested businesses to contact Innovate UK to explore other suitable support or opportunities which are open to the whole of the UK.