Four New High Street Businesses Open In Worksop, Retford And Harworth With £20k Council Grants

Four new high street businesses across Worksop, Retford and Harworth have opened with the help of Bassetlaw District Council's Shop Fit Out Grants. Café 81 in Harworth and Chick n Slice in Worksop each received £20,000. Woodaroma and Tall Trees childcare, both in Retford, shared a further £20,000-plus between them. The funding came from the UK Government's Shared Prosperity Fund via the East Midlands Combined County Authority. The Shop Fit Out grant scheme has now closed, but other support remains available for Worksop businesses through the Pride in Place programme.

The four businesses

Bassetlaw District Council has confirmed that four new high street businesses across the district have used Shop Fit Out grants to open in previously vacant premises.

Worksop

Chick n Slice received £20,000 to support the fit-out of its premises. The grant was used on the equipment and works needed to bring a vacant unit back into trading use.

Harworth

Café 81 received £20,000 to provide the kitchen equipment needed to open as a working café.

Retford

Woodaroma and Tall Trees childcare shared just over £20,000 between them. The Woodaroma funding was used on shelving and equipment. Owner Jason Davies told the council that without the grant the shop would have been "ordinary", but that the funding allowed him to create something "special".

What the grants paid for

The Shop Fit Out Grants are not general start-up funding. They are targeted specifically at the structural and equipment costs of bringing a previously empty town-centre unit into trading use. Eligible spending typically includes:

• Internal building works needed to make the unit fit for purpose
• Trade-specific equipment (e.g. kitchen equipment for food businesses, shelving and display for retail)
• Compliance work such as accessibility improvements or safety upgrades

The funding doesn't pay for general working capital, rent, staff or stock. The aim is to take the pre-trading capital cost down, and to put empty units back into use, rather than to subsidise day-to-day operations.

Why the funding is closing now

The Shop Fit Out Grants programme has now come to an end. The underlying source of the money — the UK Shared Prosperity Fund — was a time-limited national programme set up after Brexit to replace EU structural funding, and the allocations to specific local programmes had defined end dates.

Bassetlaw is one of the local authorities whose business-support funding was channelled via the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA), the body that now coordinates a number of cross-county funding streams across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands region.

What's still available, particularly for Worksop

The closure of the Shop Fit Out grants does not end all council-backed business support. New business funding remains available in Worksop specifically through the Pride in Place Programme, jointly delivered by Bassetlaw District Council and the Worksop Together Board. Three grants are currently open or upcoming:

• High Street Shop Fit Out Grant — a continuation of the same concept for new Worksop businesses
• Worksop Shop Frontage Grant — for existing businesses to refurbish their shop frontages
• High Street Business Support — broader support package for high street operators

Details and current eligibility are on the Worksop Together Board section of the council website.

For Retford and Harworth businesses, the immediate Shop Fit Out funding stream has closed; new schemes are likely to be brought forward as future EMCCA and Pride in Place funding rounds are confirmed.

Source: Bassetlaw District Council — High Street welcomes new businesses, May 2026.