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Lord Heseltine has told Insider there is a "lot of money available" from the Regional Growth Fund for small companies.

But the veteran Conservative, who is chairman of the fund's Independent Advisory Panel, admitted there have been complaints that companies are waiting too long to get any cash.

The idea behind the £2.4bn Regional Growth Fund is to invest money to create jobs in the private sector. It is set to operate across England until 2015.

He said: "Four of the five big banks are now operating schemes for very small businesses.

"There's a lot of money available for small companies. This is one of the most important things we were determined to achieve.

"It takes time to get this money flowing. I know so much of urban renaissance takes longer than you would like. I have no doubt that over the next year or two there will be very significant achievements from that fund."

Lord Heseltine said the third round of funding is due "very soon" but he could not say exactly when, adding: "It's up to the government to makes these announcements - it will certainly be before June".

He acknowledged there have been complaints from previous rounds with companies complaining money has not been getting through straight away.

The Tory grandee said the key to stimulating growth into the economy was confidence.

He added: "There are small businesses who are not getting as much finance as they would like but you have got to remember we are going through a very difficult economic time and I guess there are very large numbers of small businesses and medium companies who are not anxious to spend money.

"They are waiting for confidence to come back into the economy. Confidence is the driving factor.

"I don't myself buy this suggestion that there's a huge stack of small businesses longing to invest. I think a very high proportion of them are being cautious and certainly that's the case of the medium and bigger companies. They've got a lot of cash but they're waiting."

From 9-16 March, Liverpool will host the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Congress.

On 13 March, Lord Heseltine will join Sir Richard Branson and a host of other keynote speakers on stage.

For more information, and to book a place go to http://www.gec2012.com/.