Insider Media Limited

Nottingham’s Molecular Profiles has told Insider it has been awarded £1.6m under the first round of the government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF). The pharmaceutical research organisation has been granted the cash to build a new 30,000 sq ft facility at its Nottingham Business Park base, said chief executive Nick Patel.

The company is the only one in the East Midlands to have been awarded any funding from the RGF of the 62 bids submitted from the region.

The company said the cost of its project will total £10m.

Patel told Insider: “Without this funding we wouldn’t have been able to make the steps forward we are planning. The new facility will increase the size and capacity of what we can achieve.

“We’re a growing company and it’s fantastic news that we have secured this injection of cash.”

Just 50 businesses and partnerships across the UK received a slice of the £450m distributed through the first round of funding.

Bidding for the second round of investment – the remaining £1bn – opens today. Businesses across the country have until 1 July to submit their proposals for funding.

The government said the £450m being invested through the first round of the RGF is expected to leverage more than £2.5bn of private sector investment.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “I am delighted to announce the first successful bids for the Regional Growth Fund. I was bowled over by the quality of the bids. This money will now help create and safeguard jobs in some of the communities worst hit by the economic downturn.

“Today is a step towards rebalancing our economy away from an unhealthy overreliance on a small number of industries and a few areas. We need to spread opportunity across the whole country, drawing on our many talents. I know that with the right support these businesses can work with their communities and together play their part in leading the country back into prosperity.”

Business secretary Vince Cable said: “Supporting job creation in the regions is vital if we are to drive growth in our local communities.

“We have received a large number of ambitious and highly competitive bids to this first round of the Regional Growth Fund, which will help a number of businesses across the country to expand and create thousands of new jobs.

“The Regional Growth Fund is a competitive fund and we wanted to see proposals that created jobs in the private sector, in areas of deprivation and that is at risk of suffering from public sector cuts. I’m confident that the successful bids we have chosen will deliver on this.”

The government said its RGF scheme will create and safeguard 100,000 new jobs across England.