We’ve just been asked by the Welsh Government, as a recipient of a Welsh Government grant between April 2012 – 2015, to fill in a survey.

The survey wanted to know our experience of receiving Welsh Government grants and the support services around that.

Fine, but we haven’t actually received a Welsh Government grant for over ten years. The last time we applied, in 2013, this is what happened:

We were promised a grant by the Welsh Government towards a conference and exhibition in Berlin. Fortified by the promise, we booked the conference. When we returned we filled in our documentation, and we were then informed precisely how much we were going to be awarded in grant aid towards our costs.

However when it came to paying out the promised grant aid, the Welsh Government saw that we had booked half-price airline tickets just before the grant had had final approval. If we had waited we would have had to have paid more in air tickets than the grant covered. But this allowed the Welsh Government to renege on its promised grant.

So unless you’re a wealthy Chinese or Korean company who can afford to pay experts experienced in squeezing grant aid out of provincial governments, there’s no point in trying to apply for a government grant. Small businesses will never create bulk minimum wage jobs in order for civil servants to be able to tick boxes, so you’ll be pleased to know we won’t be wasting your time with any more such applications in the future, neither will we be wasting ours.

So that’s what we told them in their survey. I wonder if anyone will pay any attention?