A GROWING telecoms and IT company in Worcestershire has become the 100th business to be supported by a programme helping firms in the region further their growth plans.

Datatech UK is currently based in Alvechurch but is migrating services to a new state-of-the-art facility in Redditch.

The Business Development Programme (BDP) has provided grant funding to the company, to help it make the move. BDP is an £8 million business support scheme aimed at helping more than 400 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) across the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) area.

Datatech UK - formed in 2006 - provides data hosting for a range of clients in a variety of sectors, as well as providing other IT and telecom services.

Account manager Paul Adams said: “Many of the clients for whom we host data are expanding and in order for us to fulfil their requirements we needed to more than double our current capacity. Our Alvechurch data centre became full, so we decided to invest in building a bigger facility in Redditch.”

Part of that investment came with money from the BDP, which provides match grant funding for SMEs which have expansion plans ready to implement that will safeguard existing jobs or create new ones.

The programme - managed by Birmingham City Council and funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) - runs until June, 2015 and businesses in Birmingham, Cannock, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, North Worcestershire, Solihull and Tamworth can still apply.

“We looked at a few options and this programme suited us completely,” added Mr Adams. “The criteria are clear and it’s a simple process to go through and provides genuine, tangible support for businesses such as ours looking to grow, because growth will inevitably require financing and that’s often the stumbling block for SMEs.”

He added that the expansion was necessary because Datatech UK would physically host clients’ servers in racks in the Redditch facility.

“We have some clients already in the Redditch building and are migrating others across," he went on. "We are continuing to expand as a business and have not only survived very difficult trading conditions these past few years but have thrived in those conditions.”

The company currently has five staff and will look to add to that number in the next few years, he said.

As well as the Financial Assistance Scheme, an intensive coaching and mentoring scheme called great200leaders is available to 200 ambitious business owners and directors, aimed at helping them deliver personal performance and business growth.

Great200leaders includes 100 hours of leadership development. Each workshop is headed by a specialist speaker and each participant receives £4,000 funding towards the cost.

For more information about the programme visit birmingham.gov.uk/bdp or to apply for the coaching and mentoring programme visit winningmoves.com/G200L