Small Business Service (Hansard, 19 December 2001)

§ Nigel Griffiths

The SBS delivers a range of support to start-up businesses through the Business Link network and manages a number of specific initiatives. All SBS services are subject to regular and rigorous evaluation.

In Quarter One (April-June) this year, the Business Link network helped around 30,000 individuals and start-up businesses including 2,000 high-growth start-ups.

An early assessment of the high-growth start-up initiative was completed in December 2000. This showed that: the initiative had already had a positive effect in developing a targeted approach to working with high-growth start-ups; considerable progress had been made in developing understanding of local markets and developing local/regional service offers; funding should be rolled forward to enable more detailed evaluation; support is being provided, across a variety of business sectors, to people who are traditionally considered to face barriers in starting and growing a business including women, ethnic minorities and young entrepreneurs. A full evaluation of this initiative has just commenced.

An assessment of the Business Volunteer Mentors Association (BVMA) initiative was completed in March 2001. This showed that, despite the early stage of the programme: business mentoring plays an important role within the business support process. It provides the client with an on-going business relationship and a route to identifying and progressing entrepreneurial development needs. This is essential to SME development, especially at the pre and early start-up phase; clients were impressed with the quality of the volunteers and that mentoring could make a difference to their business; mentors were confident that they could make a difference to the businesses they were supporting; the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies, who co-ordinate the delivery of the BVMA initiative, were confident that the scheme could make a significant contribution to support services for pre and early start businesses.

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The Small Business Service is currently consulting on the development of a comprehensive strategy for supporting business start-ups. The consultation phase of developing the comprehensive strategy is to be completed by March 2002.

A full evaluation of all Business Link services, including those for start-ups, is planned for 2002.

The SBS is also monitoring the wider environment in which businesses start through its "Think Small First" indicators which will be published annually.