grant-finder

---
name: grant-finder
description: Turns a vague hope of free money into a dated shortlist you can actually act on: a written eligibility profile of your business, every open grant found on the government's own finders matched against that profile, a hard go or no go on each one with the disqualifying criterion named, the subsidy position recorded so a grant does not quietly cost you a loan, the deadline and the reporting obligations that follow an award, and a list of what was searched and found empty. Use before you spend an evening on an application you were never eligible for.
---

# A dated shortlist of the grants you can actually apply for, with the ones you cannot ruled out by name

You give this your legal form, your location down to the local authority, your sector and SIC code, your headcount, your turnover, your trading start date, what the money would be spent on and every public grant or subsidy you have already received. You get back an eligibility profile, the open schemes found on the government's own two finders matched against it, a go or no go on each with the exact criterion that disqualified you, a subsidy ledger showing your position against the minimal financial assistance ceiling, the deadlines and post award reporting duties, and an honest record of where the search found nothing. It will not write your application for you in this skill, and it will never say your bid is likely to win. Nobody publishes a success rate for an independent venue applying to a local grant, and a made up one will either stop you applying or waste a fortnight.

## What it does

1. **Write the eligibility profile before searching, because every grant filters on the same eight facts.** Legal form, company number where there is one, registered and trading addresses with the local authority named, SIC code, sector in plain words, headcount on a stated date, turnover for the last full year with its source, and the date the business first traded. Add what the money would buy, in one line, and whether the spend has already happened. That last point disqualifies more applicants than anything else: most capital grants will not fund expenditure already committed or incurred, and an owner who has ordered the equipment has often ended their own eligibility before they started.

2. **Search the government's two official finders first, and record the date you searched.** GOV.UK's Find a grant is a live service that "allows you to search government grants" and lets you "search and filter to find a grant that matches your needs, find out if you are eligible to apply for a grant, find out how to apply for a grant". The Department for Business and Trade's finance and support finder covers the wider field, filterable by "Type of support" including "Grant", by "Business stage" and by "Industry", which includes "Hospitality and catering" as a named option. On 23 September 2026 the second finder showed 127 schemes. Record the count and the date. It moves.

3. **Then search the three places the national finders do not reach, because most money an independent venue can win is local.** Your own local authority's business grants page, your Growth Hub or its devolved equivalent, and the relevant sector or heritage bodies where the spend fits their remit, such as a shopfront improvement scheme or a high street fund. These are administered locally, open and close without notice, and are frequently not listed nationally at all. Write the URL and the date checked against each one, because the record of an empty search is what stops the same evening being spent twice.

4. **Run the go or no go before reading the application form, and name the criterion that kills it.** For each scheme, take the published eligibility list in order and mark each line met, not met or unclear. The moment one line reads not met, the scheme is a no go and the reason is written in the owner's words: wrong local authority, trading too long, headcount above the cap, spend already incurred, match funding required and unavailable. A no go with a named criterion is a permanent decision. A no go with no reason gets revisited every three months by a tired person at eleven at night.

5. **Record the match funding requirement as a cash question, not a tick box.** Many grants fund a percentage and require the rest from the applicant, often before the grant is paid. Write the grant percentage, the cash the business must find, the date it must be available and whether it is available. A grant that requires 40 percent match funding the business does not have is a no go, and it is better to know that in the first ten minutes than after the application is written.

6. **Keep a subsidy ledger, because public money has a ceiling and a Start Up Loan already used part of it.** The Subsidy Control Act 2022 sets the minimal financial assistance threshold: "The subsidy control requirements do not apply to minimal financial assistance given to an enterprise if the total amount of minimal or SPEI financial assistance given to the enterprise within the applicable period does not exceed 315,000 pounds", with the applicable period being the current financial year and the two before it. Start Up Loans states in terms that its assistance "is regarded as Subsidy or State aid". List every public grant, loan and relief received, the amount, the date and the awarding body, and total it. An owner who exhausts the ceiling on small grants can find a later, larger award blocked.

7. **Write the deadline and the post award obligations into the same row as the opportunity, on the day you shortlist it.** The closing date and time, whether it is a fixed deadline or a rolling window, the date the decision is expected, the date funds would be paid, whether the grant is paid in advance or in arrears against receipts, and the reporting or evidence duties that follow an award. A grant paid in arrears is a cash flow event, not a windfall: the business spends its own money first and waits. Put that in the cash flow before accepting.

8. **Hand the matching, the scoring and the ledger to Codex, and keep the reading of the eligibility rules here.** Write the inputs into a working folder, then run:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over the eligibility profile, each scheme with its name, administering body, URL, published eligibility criteria copied verbatim, amount range, match funding percentage, deadline and payment basis, the owner's line by line met or not met marks, and the list of public money already received. Codex returns the shortlist, the no go register with the disqualifying criterion named, the match funding cash table, the subsidy ledger with the headroom figure, the deadline calendar and the gap list. Codex never marks a criterion met that the owner has not marked.

9. **Write the empty searches down as carefully as the hits.** Every finder, local authority page and sector body checked, with the date, the filter used and the result. An empty search recorded is an asset. An empty search unrecorded is an evening that gets spent again next quarter by somebody who does not know it was already done.

10. **Date the shortlist and set a review date.** Grants open and close on administrative timetables nobody announces. Put the build date on the file, put a review date about six weeks out, and put the closing date of the nearest deadline at the top of the page in large plain words. A shortlist with no review date rots into a list of closed schemes, and the owner concludes there is no money about when in fact the list is simply old.

## Then it checks

1. The eligibility profile states all eight facts with a source and a date against each, including the local authority by name.
2. Every scheme on the list records the finder or page it was found on, the URL and the date searched, and no scheme appears without a source.
3. Every scheme is marked go, no go or unclear, and every no go names the exact criterion that failed in the criterion's own words.
4. Every scheme records the match funding percentage and the cash the business must find, or states in terms that no match funding is required.
5. The subsidy ledger totals every public grant, loan and relief received in the current financial year and the two before it, and states the headroom against the 315,000 pound minimal financial assistance threshold.
6. Every empty search is recorded with its source, its filter and the date, and the file contains at least the two national finders and the local authority page.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a grant success rate, a typical award size for an independent venue, an average number of applicants or the odds of winning. No published figure exists for a single independent UK hospitality business applying to a local scheme, and an owner who believes a borrowed success rate will either not apply when they should or will build a cash flow around money that has not arrived.
- Never predict whether an application will be successful, and never describe a bid as strong or competitive. The assessment is made by a panel against criteria the applicant cannot see weighted, and saying otherwise is guessing dressed as analysis.
- Never mark an eligibility criterion met on the balance of probability. A criterion is met, not met or unclear, and unclear is a question for the administering body in writing before any time is spent.
- Never treat a grant as received until it is paid. A grant offer can carry conditions precedent, and a grant paid in arrears means the business funds the spend first. Neither belongs in a cash flow as income on the date of the offer.
- Never ignore the subsidy position because a scheme did not ask. The ceiling is cumulative across awarding bodies over three financial years, and the body that finds the breach is usually the one making the largest award.
- Never let a grant application be the reason a facility carrying a personal guarantee is signed to cover match funding. A personal guarantee puts the owner's own assets at risk, the grant is not certain until paid, and that decision is the owner's alone with their own solicitor.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against each scheme's own published criteria, and for their own accountant to review on the subsidy position, the VAT and tax treatment of any award and the cash flow effect of arrears payment. Where a scheme's terms create a contractual obligation, a clawback right or a charge, it is also for their own solicitor. It is not advice and it is not a statement that the business is eligible for anything.

## Built from
- Cabinet Office and GOV.UK, "Find a grant", https://www.find-government-grants.service.gov.uk/, shown on the page as a BETA service with no publication date, read 23 September 2026: the service description and the eligibility and application checks it supports, in step 2.
- Department for Business and Trade and GOV.UK, "Finance and support for your business", https://www.gov.uk/business-finance-support, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the filters for type of support, business stage and industry including hospitality and catering, and the count of 127 schemes on the day it was read, in step 2.
- Subsidy Control Act 2022, section 36, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/23/section/36, stated on the page as having no known outstanding effects, read 23 September 2026: the 315,000 pound minimal financial assistance threshold and the applicable period, in step 6.
- The Start Up Loans Company, "What is a Start Up Loan?", https://www.startuploans.co.uk/what-is-a-start-up-loan, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: that the assistance provided is regarded as subsidy or State aid and is dealt with under the minimal financial assistance provisions of the Subsidy Control Act 2022, in step 6, and the distinction it draws between a grant and a loan.
- Companies House and GOV.UK, "Get information about a company", https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the public company facts a grant assessor will check against the eligibility profile built in step 1.
- British Business Bank, "Growth Guarantee Scheme", https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/finance-options/debt-finance/growth-guarantee-scheme, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: that scheme assistance "is regarded as a subsidy and is deemed to benefit the borrower" and that "Any previous subsidy may reduce the amount a business can borrow", which is why the ledger in step 6 is kept even when no grant is in play.
- Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, "Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN)", version 1.2, https://www.experian.co.uk/legal/crain/, adopted 02 December 2024, read 23 September 2026: the statement that the agencies do not tell lenders whether to offer credit, applied by analogy in the rule forbidding any prediction of a funding outcome.

# grant-finder

## You are given
The eligibility profile for one UK hospitality business: legal form, company number where there is one, registered address, trading address, the local authority name for the trading address, SIC code, sector in plain words, headcount with the date it was counted, turnover for the last full year with the document it came from, the date the business first traded, the intended spend in one line, whether that spend has already been incurred or committed, and the cash the business could put toward match funding with the date it would be available. A list of candidate schemes, each with: scheme name, administering body, the URL it was found on, the date it was searched, the source type, the published eligibility criteria copied verbatim as separate numbered lines, the award range, the match funding percentage required, the closing date and time, whether the window is fixed or rolling, the payment basis, and the post award reporting obligations as published. For every criterion of every scheme, the owner's mark of met, not met or unclear, with the owner's own one line reason. A list of every public grant, loan, relief or subsidised facility already received, each with the awarding body, the amount in pounds, the date awarded and the financial year it fell in. A list of every search that returned nothing, each with the source, the filter used and the date. All judgement calls, including every met or not met mark, whether a spend is already committed and whether match funding is available, have already been made by the owner and are supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./grant-finder-output/` folder:

1. `profile.md` recording, on separate lines and nothing else: each of the eight profile facts with its value, its source document or page and its date; the intended spend line verbatim; whether the spend is already incurred or committed; the match funding cash available and the date it is available; and the build date. Every line names where the figure came from.
2. `schemes.csv` with these columns in this order: `scheme_ref`, `scheme_name_verbatim`, `administering_body_verbatim`, `source_type`, `url`, `date_searched`, `award_min_gbp`, `award_max_gbp`, `match_funding_percent`, `window_type`, `closing_date`, `closing_time`, `decision_date_published`, `payment_basis`, `decision`, `disqualifying_criterion_verbatim`, `unclear_criteria_count`. `scheme_ref` is G001 upward. `source_type` is exactly one of `find a grant`, `business finance support finder`, `local authority`, `growth hub`, `sector or heritage body`, `other`. `window_type` is exactly one of `fixed deadline`, `rolling`, `not stated`. `payment_basis` is exactly one of `paid in advance`, `paid in arrears against receipts`, `staged`, `not stated`. `decision` is exactly one of `go`, `no go`, `unclear`. Every `no go` row must carry a non empty `disqualifying_criterion_verbatim`.
3. `criteria.csv` with columns: `scheme_ref`, `criterion_no`, `criterion_verbatim`, `owner_mark`, `owner_reason_verbatim`, `profile_fact_relied_on`. `owner_mark` is exactly one of `met`, `not met`, `unclear`, copied from the owner and never derived. One row per published criterion per scheme, with none omitted.
4. `match-funding.csv` with columns: `scheme_ref`, `award_assumed_gbp`, `match_funding_percent`, `cash_business_must_find_gbp`, `date_cash_required`, `cash_available_gbp`, `shortfall_gbp`, `match_funding_feasible`. `match_funding_feasible` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, taken from the owner's supplied position and never inferred. Where a scheme requires no match funding, the row is written with `match_funding_percent` as 0 and `cash_business_must_find_gbp` as 0.
5. `subsidy-ledger.csv` with columns: `award_ref`, `awarding_body_verbatim`, `award_type`, `amount_gbp`, `date_awarded`, `financial_year`, `counts_toward_minimal_financial_assistance`, `source_document`. `award_type` is exactly one of `grant`, `loan`, `relief`, `guaranteed facility`, `other`. `counts_toward_minimal_financial_assistance` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, taken from the owner's supplied position. A `TOTAL` row carries the sum for the applicable period, and a `HEADROOM` row carries 315,000 pounds minus that total, both labelled with the three financial years the period covers.
6. `deadline-calendar.csv` with columns: `scheme_ref`, `scheme_name_verbatim`, `closing_date`, `closing_time`, `days_until_close_at_build`, `decision_date_published`, `payment_basis`, `reporting_obligations_verbatim`, `review_date`. Sorted ascending by `closing_date`, with rows whose closing date has already passed placed at the end and listed in `gaps.md`.
7. `empty-searches.csv` with columns: `source_type`, `source_name_verbatim`, `url`, `filter_used_verbatim`, `date_searched`, `result`. `result` is exactly one of `no schemes returned`, `schemes returned but none matched profile`, `page unavailable`. Every supplied empty search is written; none is dropped for being uninteresting.
8. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every scheme with a `decision` of `unclear` and the criteria that made it unclear; every `no go` row with an empty disqualifying criterion; every criterion marked `unclear` by the owner with the question that needs asking of the administering body; every scheme with no closing date; every scheme whose closing date has passed; every match funding row with a shortfall; every subsidy ledger row with no source document; the headroom figure where it is below the largest award on the shortlist; and any supplied text containing an em dash character.

## Rules
- Codex matches, counts, sorts and totals. It never marks a criterion met, never decides whether a scheme is a go, never judges whether a spend is eligible and never contacts an administering body.
- Never derive an owner mark from the profile. If the owner did not mark a criterion, the row is written with `owner_mark` empty and the scheme decision becomes `unclear`.
- Never estimate an award amount, a match funding percentage or a deadline. A missing value leaves the cell empty and produces a line in `gaps.md`.
- Never write a grant success rate, a typical award size, an average number of applicants or any other benchmark into any file. None exists for a single independent UK hospitality business applying to a local scheme and none is to be recorded.
- Never write any statement, in any file, about whether an application would succeed, whether a bid is competitive or whether a scheme is a good fit beyond the mechanical criterion match supplied.
- Never record a grant as income, as cash or as available funds anywhere. A grant appears only as an opportunity with a payment basis and a decision date.
- Never omit an empty search, and never merge two searches into one row. The record of where nothing was found is an output, not a byproduct.
- Never leave the subsidy ledger out because no scheme asked for it. The ceiling is cumulative across awarding bodies and the total is always written.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the word pounds, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dash characters in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every scheme name, administering body, criterion, owner reason and reporting obligation is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against each scheme's own published criteria, and for their own accountant to review on the subsidy position and the tax and cash flow treatment of any award, and for their own solicitor where a scheme's terms create a clawback right or a charge. It is not advice and it is not a statement that the business is eligible for anything.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the counts of schemes by decision, the list of every `go` scheme with its name, award range, match funding cash required and closing date, the list of every `no go` scheme with the disqualifying criterion quoted, the count of criteria marked `unclear` and the schemes they sit on, the subsidy ledger total and the headroom figure against the 315,000 pound threshold with the three financial years named, the nearest closing date and the days remaining at build, the number of empty searches recorded with their sources listed, and the `gaps.md` item count.