Getting funding for a new business venture...
We are in the process of buying up an old tannery in the village that has been empty for four years, with the intention of turning the industrial part into a dépôt-vente plus exhibition space and tea room and the residential part into an extension of our already successful holiday let business.
We have the full support of the Maire and the local community as we intend it to also serve as a community meeting place, history/cultural centre and support for local artists and artisans.
However, initial costs relating directly to the purchase (Notaire and agency fees, pollution study fees, guarantee and accountancy fees, deposit...) add up to in excess of €46,000 - before the bank loans us the money for the property purchase and works to bring it up to current standards and obtain ERP3.
We have worked with the CCI and obtained an €8,000, 0% loan (valid once the business is up and running) but apart from that, all our appeals for help with funding have come to nothing.
Whenever we visit the CCI or any local / departmental or regional level buildings, there are posters all over the place promising help for people setting up businesses, creating employment, saving patrimoine buildings etc. But no joy actually getting anything. If they spent as much on grants and loans as they did on posters, we'd be fine!!
So, has anyone managed to actually obtain any local or state funding for a business venture? If so, how did you go about it?
At the moment, we are falling back on crowd-funding and begging from friends and sympathetic locals....
Thanks,
Danielle
Yes they did Jane, and its a shame. A strong credible labor leader would seal it for the anti Brexit camp.
Tim, they knew what he was like, but still voted him in.
At the end of the day food on the table will be the decider.
If people feel that their is a chance of their company losing business,moving to Poland etc then they are going to vote to stay in.
However I do wish Corbyn was not such a total wuz. The labor party and the unions are pro stay in but this, unreformed Marxist is still banging on about Trident and socialist solidarity when he should be standing up and supporting his parties official stance which is stay in.Nothing will deflect this man from his lifelong extreme left passions even the extremely important issue of the Brexit and the life changing effect an exit could have for the members of his party.
I too pay my tax in the UK Barry (as well as owning a house and being on the electoral list) and, having paid national insurance for more than 40 years it did seem a bit unfair to me.
Wow, that great Michael. Did not know this. Not planning any more accidents but it is reassuring to know we wont have to go through all that uproar (and expense) in future.
Thanks Jane. I will give them a ring. But I never had an S1. I was retired when I came here and got a carte vitale within three weeks.
Michael, this is true, but I have been following this carefully and I have received confirmation via letters from my MEP’s who have taken this up on my behalf that you need to be in UK to register with a GP.
Also different health authorities have their own schemes for entry to hospital and you need to find a consultant, usually via a GP.
Some GP’s in certain areas are closing their lists as they are so overworked.
Although I have been working for free access to UK healthcare for ex-pat British retirees for several years, the UK government is not making it easy.
Having just experienced French emergency healthcare with the following surgery in Macon and endoscopy in Lyons, I would not be looking to use the NHS.
Returning ex-pats in receipt of a form S1 now have immediate access to the NHS without the previously imposed six month wait.
I'm in full time employment in the Lot. Saint Céré to be more precise and those two words are contradictory :)
Carsat has been very good despite their 'internal' problems. The Complementary agencies have been very long due to even worse manpower shortages. Another problem seems to be that the Carsat don't have direct links to other agencies like Assedic etc. They will send a request (ad nauseum) for info from say, Assedic but make no effort to contact them personally to confirm the details. Just a simple working together would speed things up considerably.
Thank you Diana, 66 for me apparently I can retire in 2024 if I make it.
Thank you Peter, I think it will be 62 for me. I already have info from the french side and they asked me where I'd been for the missing years. At least the french side are on the ball.
Your French retirement date depends on when you were born Stuart. I was born in 1954 so my date turned out to be 1 year 7 months after my 60th birthday. Start the ball rolling asap because the Carsat fanny about a lot !
Fingers crossed for you all. Sounds like the District Nurses may be visiting your father at home for the catheter (as they did for my late Dad with the same condition), and you will probably find a Chiropodist who does home visits - the GP will be able to tell you more about that. Mum always used to be brought home by an ambulance, (she couldn't have got in or out of our car) so don't worry about that, the ambulance team will see him indoors. Pharmacists now make arrangements with the GP so that prescriptions are organised by the pharmacy and the drugs are delivered direct to the customer's door, if he has difficulty with bottles and packets then request "dossette packs" in which each days doses are sorted into little plastic bubbles and he won't have to organise them himself. If you express your concerns to the GP about the prostate cancer then he might contact the specialist and discuss it direct.
The clinic appointments are a nuisance, but transport can be requested. I confess I used to discuss them with Mum, who got very worried about going to the clinics as she was scared her bladder wouldn't cope with a magical mystery tour round town picking up other people on the way to the hospital. I just said, "Mum, if these tests indicated that you needed an operation, would you have one?" and she confirmed she would not, so I just rang up and cancelled the appointments, but I could not have taken this approach if I thought for one moment that she would have accepted surgery: she had insisted so many times that she wouldn't have another operation that I couldn't force her to go through the tests.
Oddly enough, the fact that you don't live in the UK gives you extra bargaining power as Social Services have to ensure that your father is looked after without relying on you, or on your brothers as they life too far away to respond urgently. Insist on seeing care plans!
I'll be thinking of you over the weekend, Wendy. The year since my Mum died has been so calm after the last four years of her life! Not a stage I look forward to going through myself.
Thank you! I phoned my brother for an update on yesterday's visit at lunchtime ... good news is, Dad was sitting in a chair (the first time out of bed in several days) and was looking more alert. The bad news: he is now being treated for an eye infection and oral thrush, neither of which he had on admission.
We are already determined that one of us should be present when he goes home, whenever that may be. First concern, he has not walked more than 40m in hospital (with a stick and assistance from a physio, recorded in his notes as being "wobbly on corners") but it is 75m from the nearest a car can get to his front door, with two corners and uneven paving. Even if OT lend him a collapsible wheelchair, he lives alone and his good friend who lives nearby is herself 80 and recovering from cancer: neither of them could lift a wheelchair in and out of a vehicle. Assuming we can help him in, he will effectively be housebound. He is being discharged with a catheter but no-one has answered the question of how he will manage this. Sure, the twice daily carers can empty it, check it and put the night bag on and off. But the day bag will need emptying in between their visits and he cannot manage this himself due to arthritis in his fingers. Then there is a question of outpatient appointments ... he has a gastroscopy booked for the 15th, an appointment for the consultant dermatologist for the 16th, is waiting for an appointment with his ophthalmologist, and needs to see a chiropodist for an ingrowing toenail. Apparently none of these things can be brought forward and done while he is still in hospital, although at present rate he may still be in by then anyway. And the doctors do not apparently consider it necessary to discuss his prostate cancer with his specialist, despite the fact that they admit it is probably the enlarged prostate pressing on his bladder that caused him to go in to retention in the first place! To say that I am frustrated is an understatement!
I am due to go back to the UK at the weekend ... I may take your advice and try to talk to the GP. Thanks for that suggestion.
Your age at UK retirement depends on when you were born, you can look it up online. https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age - could be 65 or 67
You can ask former employers to provide a pension illustration if you have paid in to company schemes. Even if frozen for years they may pay out more than you think as schemes are often index-linked even while frozen, as my husband's Sainsburys one was.
On a more serious note, but not much different to what I say above. My worry is how much I will get when I retire and when can I retire. I'm guessing 62 in France and 65 in UK?
I already received info from state pension in France but nothing from the UK.
I also contacted my first company where I had 11 years service albeit 4 of them being apprentice and I started on the princely sum of £10.54 a week. Turns out the payments won't be too bad from them. The pension is from Rolls Royce.
I now have to find out about my 17 years service with Allied Signal under it's many names during that period.
I was paid very well for 7 years in France and then very well (for a numpty like me) for 7 years back in the UK up to 2002. I'm hoping that is the one that will keep us alive.
A suivre.
I sympathise! Ward staff wouldn't tell me a thing during one stay because Mum's cleaner had told them she was the granddaughter and next of kin. I was incensed and tore a strip off Ma when she came out, asking her if she was happy for the cleaner to say when life support was turned off? One social worker planning after-care stated that she didn't speak to families because they often disagreed and some just wanted to put the oldie in a home. When left to their own devices the care provided was inappropriate, so I had to learn to be unusually pushy, for me at least. The last of the Occupational Therapists did take the trouble to ring me for confirmation that Mum cooked her own meals, dressed herself and did her own housework as she had claimed, and I explained that she had done none of these things for 4 years: does none of them read the records? The most crucial time is when they are sent home - it really is worth being around if you can. I had to chase up the GP because the hospital hadn't told him she needed daily injections and it was for him to organise the district nurse, and again to chase up repeat prescriptions for new drugs which the hospital hadn't told him about. Oh, and if the Care agency turns up before the client gets home from hospital then they are not at fault as they didn't miss the call, the client did, so they won't have to come back later. I could write a book. I probably should!
If you are really worried about your father's condition and treatment, it may be worth contacting his GP and asking them to obtain an update from the ward. Otherwise they won't know what's going on until he is discharged. Ward staff hate to say to relatives that there's little they can do, but they will be more frank with a GP. It's not as if you and your brothers were not mature enough to cope with an honest opinion, positive or negative.
Feel free to let off steam to me!
What are the biggest problems or challenges that you are facing at the moment? WORK
What are you worried about? WORKING
What do you need help with? WORK
What can SFN do to make you life easier? PAY ME
Let me know what you need to improve your life! MONEY
Sorry, couldn't help myself.