Business and licensing

How it works

1. Visit the Town and City Gift Cards website
2. Select a purchase type, gift card value and card type
3. Send the gift card to the person you want to treat or reward.

You can also buy a gift card or pick one up to load later at:
Paisley First
1 County Place
Paisley
PA1 1BN

Where to spend your gift card

150 businesses across Renfrewshire currently accept the Renfrewshire Gift Card.

It can be used for:

• shopping
• food and drink
• health and beauty
• leisure and attractions
• services.

View a map and list of all retailers on the Town and City Gift Cards website.

Add your business

Businesses interested in accepting the gift card can sign up on the Town and City Gift Cards website.
 

Spend Local toolkit for businesses

Renfrewshire is home to many fantastic businesses. We can all support them by choosing to spend local.

Around 70p from every pound spent local, stays local.

Print and display a poster, a set of flyers or window/door stickers. We've set these up so you can print in your own premises.

It’s a gift card you can spend with 150 businesses across Renfrewshire.

You can buy a physical card or an e-card, choose a gift card value and then share the gift card with someone you want to treat.

You can buy as an individual and treat friends or family; or you can buy as a business and use for corporate gifting or rewarding.

With energy bills and operating costs on the rise, it's becoming more expensive than ever to produce carbon emissions.

Assess your energy usage, review where you source your energy from, and install energy efficiency measures - and the average small-to-medium-sized enterprise could reduce energy bills by 18-25% and reduce their overall carbon footprint.

The Net Zero Business Grant is open to small and medium-sized businesses, including social enterprises, which meet all of the following criteria:

• the applicant is a full-time business and has a business bank account
• the business operates from commercial premises within the Renfrewshire Council area, for which there is a signed lease, rental, or licence agreement in place
• at the time of submitting the grant application, the business is neither in bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar.

This grant is not available to community groups or not-for-profit, voluntary, or charitable organisations.

Applications to this fund are limited to 1 application per business. We will not consider subsequent applications at this time.

You'll need to provide:

• an up to date business plan
• your most recent annual accounts (if applicable) or up to date management accounts
• quotes
• baseline emissions.

If a full business plan is not available, a mini business plan consisting of a 1-page summary of the company setting out its plans for the future is sufficient.

Submit an online application explaining why external financial assistance from Renfrewshire Council is necessary to enable the project to proceed.

Apply for a Net Zero Business Grant

Once we receive your application, we'll review the application against assessment criteria and will be in touch to discuss your application. We'll make our decision shortly after this meeting and, if you're successful, we'll formally offer you the grant.

Net Zero Accelerator

Scottish Enterprise's Net Zero Accelerator is a simple online tool. Businesses can use it to assess their efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions and help build their net zero action plan.

Register with Scottish Enterprise to use Net Zero Accelerator.

Find out about loans and grants available for businesses in Renfrewshire.

Business Development Grant

The Business Development Grant is a competitive, discretionary fund, part funded by the UK Local Growth Fund, providing up to 50% match funding from £1,000 to £10,000 to help small and medium sized businesses in Renfrewshire deliver their growth plans.

This includes the purchase of equipment or digital systems which are new to the business, property improvements or expansion, export development, exhibition costs, and the creation of new products or processes.

This grant is to support business growth by helping businesses implement projects which increase turnover and employment through improvements in productivity, competitiveness or innovation.

It cannot be used for vehicles, wages, stock, general purchases, or routine maintenance, and projects must not begin before an application is submitted. To be eligible, businesses must operate from a commercial premises within Renfrewshire.

Apply for a Business Development Grant

Business Restart Loan

The Business Restart Loan offers small and start-up businesses and people self-employed with interest free loans between £1,000 to £5,000 repayable up to three years, to help with short-term cashflow. The loans are provided through partnership with Right Way Credit Union.

Apply for a Business Restart Loan

Net Zero Grant

Small and medium sized businesses in Renfrewshire can apply for a grant providing up to 50 percent funding up to £10,000 to make changes to their business premises and operations to reduce their carbon footprint.

This includes moving to a low carbon heating system or using solar powered energy, but the grant cannot be used on existing systems, carbon-offsetting or on consultant fees or staff costs.

The online application requires businesses to provide their baseline carbon footprint. See the guides on how to measure your carbon footprint (Scottish Enterprise ) and helpful free online training from Business Energy Scotland.

Apply for a Net Zero Grant

Retail Improvement Scheme grants for shop fronts

You can apply for a grant to repair, improve, upgrade, or restore the front of your shop, business, or commercial premises in Renfrewshire.

Find out more about the Retail Improvement Scheme grant.

Start-Up Street

Read more about the low-cost business incubator, accommodation and business support for up to two years for early stage and start-up businesses, Start-Up Street.

Town Centre Premises Grant

The grant can help businesses move into empty, ground-floor commercial premises in Paisley, Johnstone, Renfrew, Linwood or Erskine town centres.

You could get a grant of up to 50% of your project costs, up to a maximum of £25,000.

Find out more about the Town Centre Premises Grant.

Help to apply for a business grant or loan

For more information about applying for any of the grants, loans and funding schemes listed you can contact our Business Gateway team.

You can contact us if you need to talk to us about your Business Improvement District (BID) levy for Paisley town centre, including billing and querying the charges.

Before you contact us, you can:

• find out more about the Paisley town centre Business Improvement District (BID), including the ballot information
• view the BID area (Paisley First).

It helps if you can give us your BID reference number (find it at the top of your most recent bill).

Use the business rates online form to contact us. Select the option to 'Make a General Enquiry - BID (Business improvement District) - Paisley First'.

Contact us about BID

You can download the latest list of Renfrewshire organisations receiving business rates relief.

We need to know if a business property has a new tenant. This is so we can charge the new tenant, not the old tenant, for the property’s future business rates.

Either the new tenant or the property’s owner needs to tell us about the change in tenancy.

You should decide between you which one of you will tell us about the change in ownership. There’s no need for both of you to tell us.

Tell us about a change of tenancy for business rates

We need to know if a business property has been sold to a new owner. This is so we can charge the new owner, not the old owner, for the property’s future business rates.

Either the property’s buyer or seller needs to tell us about the change in ownership.

You should decide between you which one of you will tell us about the change in ownership. There’s no need for both of you to tell us.

Tell us about a change of ownership for business rates