Help to Grow: Digital closed – what website funding exists in 2026?

Last checked: October 2026. We compared every scheme in this guide with official pages on 20 October 2026. Funding rounds open and close quickly, so confirm the status with the scheme itself before you plan a project around it.

Help to Grow: Digital closed to new applications on 2 February 2023. As of 20 October 2026, we found no national UK scheme that pays for building a standard business website. We looked at gov.uk, business.gov.uk, the advice services in all four nations and a range of local pages before writing that sentence.

That does not mean there is nothing. What exists in 2026 falls into four groups: a government-backed start-up loan, free advice services, sector programmes such as Made Smarter for manufacturers, and occasional local grants that fund a batch of projects and then stop. This guide takes each in turn and ends with a practical plan.

Help to Grow: Digital is often remembered as a “website grant”, but it never was one. It gave eligible businesses one discount of up to 50%, capped at £5,000 excluding VAT, towards one approved software product, covering 12 months of that product’s core costs.

Three categories qualified: digital accounting, customer relationship management (CRM) and eCommerce software. The eCommerce category was added on 25 July 2022, in the same announcement that widened eligibility to businesses with at least one employee who is not an owner. The upper limit was 249 employees.

Applicants also had to be based in the UK and registered with Companies House (or on the FCA Mutuals Register), have traded for more than 12 months and be buying the approved software for the first time.

In other words, the scheme subsidised a subscription to an approved platform. It did not pay a designer or developer to plan, build or migrate a website. Keep that in mind when you read that “the website grant” disappeared in 2023: the gap is real, but it is a gap in software support, and website builds were never part of the national offer.

The government announced the end of the scheme on 15 December 2022, giving businesses less than two months to apply. Discounts already issued had to be redeemed within 30 days of their issue date. The reason given was take-up: despite a marketing campaign, wider eligibility and positive feedback from users, fewer than 1,000 vouchers had been redeemed, and the government said it could not justify the continued cost to the taxpayer.

The final evaluation report, written by RSM UK Consulting and published in September 2023, gives the detail:

• 1,507 applications for the discount were made through the scheme’s website, of which 1,377 (91%) were eligible.
• Of those 1,377 vouchers, 830 (60%) were redeemed and 547 (40%) were not.
• Redeemed vouchers totalled £823,504.96, an average of £992.17 each.
• 53% of redeemed vouchers were for CRM software, 24% for e-commerce and 23% for accountancy software.
• Businesses with fewer than 10 employees made up 75% of those that redeemed a voucher.

The Department for Business and Trade published a statistics release on applications and redemptions on 9 May 2023 and said it would be the only one for the scheme. On the day of the closure announcement, the trade body techUK said the decision left a major gap in support for digital adoption and urged the government to look at options such as a tax incentive for SMEs.

The practical lesson is simple. The average redeemed discount was under £1,000, so even while it ran, the scheme was never going to fund a full website project for most small firms.

The table summarises what we could verify. “Website eligible?” means whether the scheme’s own material names a website build as something it pays for, not whether a creative application might get one through.

Two patterns stand out. National money comes as loans or as sector programmes, and the grants that explicitly fund websites are local and small.

A Start Up Loan is a government-backed, unsecured personal loan of £500 to £25,000 to start or grow a business, and the government describes it as the British Business Bank’s scheme. You repay over one to five years at a fixed interest rate of 7.5% a year, with no application fee and no early repayment fee. You will need to pass a credit check.

To apply you must be 18 or over, live in the UK, have the right to work here and have, or plan to start, a UK-based business that has been fully trading for less than five years. Successful applicants get up to 12 months of free mentoring.

The application asks for a business plan, a 12-month cash flow forecast, a personal budget and three months of bank statements. A business adviser reviews it and decides, and a second person reviews that decision.

On spending, business.gov.uk says you cannot use the money to repay debt, to pay for training and education, or for investment opportunities unrelated to your business, and some business types are excluded. It does not mention websites either way. In our view, a website set out in your business plan as part of launching or marketing the business is worth raising with your adviser before you apply. Remember it is borrowed money: budget for the repayments.

In England, government business support now sits under the Business Growth Service, which launched in July 2025. The government’s small business plan calls it a nationally recognised brand, delivered locally through Growth Hubs and online through business.gov.uk.

The same plan says funding for Growth Hubs and the Made Smarter Adoption programme will be included for established mayoral strategic authorities receiving integrated settlements from financial year 2026/27 onward. We found no sign that this money pays for website builds.

The other nations run their own services:

• Scotland: Business Gateway is a publicly funded service offering free one-to-one expert advice, online resources, webinars and events, with local teams across Scotland.
• Wales: Business Wales gives free, independent advice whether you are planning a business or already trading.
• Northern Ireland: nibusinessinfo.co.uk, a free service offered by Invest NI, describes the council-led Digital Transformation Flexible Fund.

Free advice has real value just before you spend several thousand pounds. An adviser can sanity-check your brief, your quotes and your plan for running the site once it is live.

The government’s SME Digital Adoption Taskforce published its final report on 31 July 2025 with ten recommendations. One asked for a cross-departmental evidence gathering exercise on firm-level financial support, noting that financial barriers are a major obstacle for SMEs adopting digital and AI technologies.

The taskforce’s 2026 update, published on 26 June 2026, says roundtables with No.10 Downing Street are bringing industry leaders together to develop a new support package, and that a further package will be announced by the end of the year. It also reports a cross-government evidence review of UK and international financial support schemes, and place-based pilots in Leeds and the West of England. At the time of checking we found no announcement of the package, so we cannot say whether it will include money for websites.

The small business plan also commits to digital adoption pilots, an expanded Made Smarter Adoption programme and a new tech adoption scheme for high-growth potential professional and business services SMEs. We found no launch date, budget or eligibility rules for that last scheme.

Made Smarter Adoption itself is organised region by region for SME manufacturers. The South East programme, for example, has been extended until the end of March 2027 and offers match funding of up to 50% for equipment. We found nothing listing a standard marketing website as an eligible project.

The schemes that explicitly fund websites tend to be local. One working example is the Digital Adoption Grant run by York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority.

The grant aims to help businesses adopt new technologies and resources to increase innovation and productivity. Projects should meet some or all of five objectives: better productivity, better sustainability, more income, more exports and more lead generation.

The combined authority’s page now lists 28 projects that secured funding. The awards shown run from £1,000 to £3,000. Many of them pay for a new website, a full rebuild, or booking and e-commerce features added to an existing site; others fund CRM systems, AI tools or bespoke software.

We found no open application round on that page at the time of checking. The pattern is typical: small sums, a clear set of objectives and a funding batch that is decided and then published. If you wait for a round to open before you start getting quotes, you may miss it.

1. If you are starting up or have been trading for less than five years, check whether a Start Up Loan suits you.
2. Ask your Growth Hub, Business Gateway, Business Wales or council business team whether a digital grant round is open or planned near you, and join their mailing list.
3. Get a quote that separates one-off build costs from recurring costs such as hosting, licences and domains, because schemes can treat the two differently.
4. Ask each scheme whether it pays in advance or after you have spent the money, and whether work can start before approval.
5. Ask how VAT is treated before you set your budget.
6. Phase the work: launch a lean, well-built site now and add booking, shop or system integrations when a suitable scheme opens.

If you would like a quote broken down that way, request a quote and mention the scheme you are considering. Our services page shows the kind of work we take on.

• Final opportunity for businesses to access Help to Grow: Digital scheme – GOV.UK
• Help to Grow: Digital applications and voucher redemptions – GOV.UK
• Evaluation of Help to Grow: Digital – Final Evaluation Report (September 2023)
• More than a million businesses now eligible for Help to Grow as software scheme receives a boost – GOV.UK
• Closure of Help to Grow: Digital leaves a major gap in support for UK digital adoption – techUK
• Apply for a Start Up Loan for your business – GOV.UK
• Applying for a Start Up Loan – business.gov.uk
• Backing your business: our plan for small and medium sized businesses – GOV.UK
• SME Digital Adoption Taskforce: final report – GOV.UK
• SME Digital Adoption Taskforce: 2026 update – GOV.UK
• Made Smarter Adoption – South East
• Digital Adoption Programme – York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority
• Business Gateway – business support in Scotland
• Get support for your business from Business Wales – GOV.WALES
• Digital Transformation Flexible Fund – nibusinessinfo.co.uk