Solent: 'Great bonus' for Southampton boat-builder

With advice from NatWest, award-winning South Coast boat-builder Pascoe International has qualified for R&D tax credits to the tune of £250,000.

The company has rapidly garnered a reputation for crafting tenders for some of the world’s biggest and best yachts. Based at Universal Marina in Southampton, it employs over 85 people and has seen its turnover and profits soar as demand for its products among global trendsetters has rocketed.

R&D is intrinsic to the business as it creates a range of bespoke products for clients.  It is imperative that is aware of, and adapting to, the latest technologies and design techniques. Over the past few years, however, it has also invested particularly heavily with regard to R&D around some of its core hull designs, which it uses across much of its range.

Despite all this, Pascoe was originally told by its accountants that it was not eligible for the Government’s R&D tax credit scheme. CEO Richard Watson explained: “We had become aware of the R&D tax credit scheme via word of mouth but were told by our previous accountant that we weren’t eligible, particularly as some of our R&D work has to be scrapped unfinished as new industry technologies and designs supersede it during a long development process.”

Undeterred, Simon Finch from NatWest did some more research into the government scheme, before taking further advice from Menzies chartered accountants and making the introduction. It became apparent that the company was actually eligible for credits to the tune of £250,000.

Watson said: “We went back through our accounts for the previous two years and analysed them to see if we qualified for credits. The HMRC were very helpful and we’ve had a great bonus out of it. We’re now in a position where we know the process so can apply pretty painlessly every year. We reckon that it’s only taken us around 15 - 20 man hours to get up to speed on the scheme, processes, etc, so it’s certainly paid off.”