Key Information
WFG is a one-off grant designed to encourage new coastal or short sea shipping services. WFG can assist a company with the operating costs associated with running waterborne freight transport instead of road, where transport by water is more expensive. The grant applies to coastal and short sea shipping and can assist a
company for up to three years.
WFG is designed to facilitate and support modal shift to waterborne freight services, generating environmental and wider social benefits from reduced lorry journeys on Britain’s roads. We recognise that making the shift from road to water can sometimes be expensive and WFG is intended to offset some of the additional costs of switching to a more environmentally friendly mode of transport.
The primary aim of the scheme is to provide time limited support for the inception of new services. However, in exceptional circumstances WFG may be considered to enable an existing loss-making service to become viable and prevent freight transferring to road. In this case, an application would need to identify why the current service was failing and identify upgrades to the service which would turn the service into one with long-term viability. This could involve an improved vessel specification, increased capacity, quality of service, timings of sailing, regularity of sailing, voyage time, etc.
More information can be found on Gov.uk here.