Good practice:

Workshops on ERDF grants

During the management of the previous ERDF Operational Program 2007-2013 for the Castilla y León Administration, different calls for grants were closed with remaining credit due to lack of enough applications. It was understood that there were some problems, on the one hand in the dissemination of calls among SMEs, and on the other hand the difficulty in complying with all the formal obligations involved in grants co-financed by ERDF Fund.

It was considered that additional awareness activities were needed, apart from traditional media such as local newspapers, on-line bulletins, etc. Nine practical workshops (from 2015 to 2018, 2-3 workshops per year), on sustainable energy subsidies were organised, in order to bring closer the grants information to SMEs, featuring all the key information.

The innovative aspect and the reason why the workshops were very attractive to SMEs was their very hands-on approach. It consisted of working with real cases of energy efficiency investments in SMEs. The participants set out their own proposals and along with Regional Administration workers on the subsidies programs, grant applications were simulated, filling in the official forms and technical reports for the application, and it was explained and calculated the energy and economic savings, as well as the subsidies they could apply.

General Directorate of Energy staff: 2 experts on energy efficiency participating in the nine workshops (150 hrs: two people traveling and working nine full working days each).
External assistance for outreach campaign and publicity material: 10.000 € of total cost for the nine workshops.

Thanks to the purely practical approach of the workshops, more companies have a better understanding on how to apply for grants and are therefore encouraged to submit applications. This is evidenced by the increase in the number of applications compared to the previous year: 54% increase in 2017, 64% increase in 2018 and 2019. It is clear that there is a year on year increase as SMEs are now familiar with the approach and the support they can obtain; we only see further increases in the region.

The wide variety of cases raised during the workshops means that workers from the Administration who run the workshops must be well trained in both technical and administrative knowledge, which is a major difficulty in terms of prior preparation, but this is not insurmountable.

Workshops organized by the Administrations with an eminently practical approach are always very well received by the SMEs, since they allow them to resolve their doubts in a very direct way. This practice is easily transferable elsewhere, considering that the key factors are good dissemination to encourage the participation of SMEs and to have highly skilled specialists from the Administration.