Sunderland playing its part in bid to create 6,000 new jobs

Expressions of interest are now open for Scaleup North East, which is being delivered by Sunderland’s RTC North as an integral part of the North East Growth Hub.

A ‘scaleup’ is defined as a business with average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent each year over a three year period.

Businesses involved in the new programme will be matched with an experienced ‘Scaleup Partner’ to work with them throughout their journey to support and inspire them to achieve their growth goals.

Colin Bell, Business Growth Director at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “Scaleup North East is an incredibly exciting programme that is aimed at businesses that want to scale, become more profitable and employ more people.

“This is something totally new. It’s a real step-change for the region that will help us meet our goal of creating more and better jobs and opportunities, as set out in our Strategic Economic Plan.

“Scaleup North East will create and sustain more scaleup businesses and has the potential to make a truly transformational impact on the North East economy.”

RTC North chief executive Andrew Buckley said: “We are looking forward not only to working with the region’s existing scale up businesses, helping them to overcome any barriers to continued growth, but also to identifying and nurturing the next generation of scale up businesses.”

To join Scaleup North East, businesses must be based in the North East LEP area; be a registered company and have been trading for more than three years; have at least of five and fewer than 250 employees; have an annual turnover of more than £500,000 and less than £50million, and operate in an eligible sector.

Any interested businesses are being asked to sign up to attend the launch event on January 26 at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scaleup-north-east-launch-tickets-39730349545.