Where can I get free business advice and help finding grants?
Short answer
Your local Growth Hub. There are 38 across England offering free advice and signposting to grants, finance and specialist programmes, with no charge to businesses. Wales has Business Wales, Scotland has Scottish Enterprise, and Northern Ireland has Invest NI alongside local councils.
Growth Hubs are regional business support networks, part-funded by government and originally delivered through Local Enterprise Partnerships, with those functions now moving to combined authorities. They exist because most grant and support programmes are locally administered, time-limited and poorly publicised — and an adviser who tracks them saves weeks of searching.
What they actually do
- Initial advice — a conversation by phone, video or in person about your specific problem, ending in a signpost rather than a sales pitch. Expect a first response within about two working days.
- Grant and finance scoping — which schemes are open, which have closed, and what you qualify for. They are the local front door to British Business Bank programmes including Start Up Loans, and to UK Shared Prosperity Fund schemes run by your council.
- Specialist programmes — Help to Grow Management, a 12-week leadership course for SME directors subsidised at 90% (typically around £750 to the business); Made Smarter, offering digital transformation grants of up to £20,000 to manufacturers in participating regions; Innovate UK Edge advisers; and UK Export Finance support.
All of this is free. Find your hub through the network directory; your business postcode determines the nearest, though you may use any of them.
Getting a useful answer
Advisers respond to precision. "I want help to grow" produces generic signposting; "I need around £20,000 towards equipment that will cut our electricity use by 30%" gets matched to a real scheme. Bring current figures — turnover, profit, headcount and your plans for the next twelve months — because almost every programme has eligibility thresholds keyed to them.
Two practical rules. Take the free things first: vouchers, training and adviser time have no application risk, whereas grants have long timetables and high rejection rates. And be realistic about timing — typical grant decisions run 8 to 16 weeks, and specialist innovation grants can take six months or more, so do not build a plan that needs the money next month.
The GOV.UK business support finder lets you filter every UK programme by sector, size and location; the value a Growth Hub adds is interpreting those results and telling you which are genuinely worth your time. They will not write the application for you, though some hubs offer free one-to-one coaching on major bids — worth asking. Pre-start businesses can use them too.
Related guides
Growth Hubs: Finding Free Business Support in Your Area
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