Small firms: Region's business community faces up to massive cuts in innovation and support

The 4iP digital fund, which provides early stage funding to digital and media businesses, will see its budget reduced by 771,600, while Yorkshire Futures, which provides a collaborative approach to research, will have 100,000 taken away.

Financial Leeds, which supports the growth of the financial services sector, will also see cuts of 100,000.

Among the small business support schemes facing less money are the national Designing Demand programme, which will see 600,000 cut from its Yorkshire budget. Almost 250,000 is to be deferred or cut from university enterprise schemes.

Projects which support businesses in bioscience, healthcare and chemical sectors, will have more than 277, 000 taken away, while the Yorkshire Concept fund, which helps move ideas from university laboratories to the market-place, faces cuts of 150,000.

Some 1.4m will be deferred from a large company research and development support scheme. The Yorkshire and Humber European Office, which aims to provide strategic links between businesses and Europe, faces cuts of 200,000.

Yorkshire Forward will also save 2.6m through its Response to Redundancies programme, which supports businesses and employees facing redundancy, while the Sustain and Train in Manufacturing scheme, which helps troubled manufacturing businesses to invest in training will have 1.4m cut.

More than 1m has gone from a scheme for loans of up to 25,000 to businesses in dep-rived areas. Projects to support job recruitment and retention in deprived areas will be deferred.

Vice chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses in Yorkshire and Humber Tony Cherry said: "My concern is that across-the-board cuts at Yorkshire Forward will disproportionately affect the small business community."