What’s now?

1. I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying, but failing, to assist government departments and agencies to improve the quality of publicly funded small business support.

With a few exceptions, it is just not good enough and is certainly five years behind what businesses and start ups in the UK both need and deserve. Most people only use the publicly funded business support services because they have to in order to get a subsidy, grant, loan, benefit payment or ‘license to trade’.

2. I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying, but failing, to assist government departments and agencies to improve the opportunities provided to people starting and running a small business to get the ‘know-how’ and ‘know-what’ that will increase their chances of success.

With a few exceptions, what prospective and existing business owners are offered through publicly funded learning is at the wrong time, from the wrong people and is too long, too formal, too boring, too old, too impractical and too big company, boiled down, second hand management twaddle. Most people only use the publicly funded small business learning and skills support because it’s cheap, or free, or it’ll give them a badge or a certificate that they need in order to do business or raise profile.

3. I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying, but failing, to assist government departments and agencies to ensure that more of the funding they allocate to small business support actually reaches the small business in a form that will provide them with the practical help they want.

With a few exceptions, most of the money they allocate for small business support goes into the infrastructure and organisations they create to provide the support. Additionally, each scheme will have a high administrative cost and an increasingly high national, regional and local marketing cost in order to get small businesses to use services and service providers that they don’t want or trust. What money is left is then packaged into unpalatable programmes that the Government can measure to achieve its policy and political targets, but which add nothing new or of real value to small businesses’ ability to survive and thrive.

What’s next?

In 2004 and 2005 the Government will continue to try and improve the small business support available from the huge number of publicly funded organisations and people.

There’ll be new ways of measuring the quality of the support.
New schemes and targets will be announced and the ‘usual suspects’, from start-ups and existing small businesses, will take them up.
Those in the publicly funded business support infrastructure will continue to prosper.
There will be a different shape to the small business support, but no difference in the benefit that most small businesses get from the £hundreds of millions of public funding spent.

The better quality and trusted private sector small business support that small businesses are already using, will not be available through publicly funded support programmes.

I’m not willing just to give in, but I don’t want to get two years older sitting in committees and steering groups and getting nowhere.

Please, will you:

Help me to get the Government to reduce its spend on the existing, mammoth, publicly funded business support infrastructure?
Help me to stop them marketing and administering schemes we don’t want, from people we don’t think can help us?
Help me to increase Government spending, so we can afford to purchase what we do need and value from existing and proven small business support services in the private sector?

If you agree to help me, all you need to do is leave your name, your business name, number of employees and e-mail address and we’ll let you know how our campaign for change is progressing.