Section Menu

Business Support Simplification Programme Newsletter 22 June 2007

Welcome to the BSSP Newsletter which will provide you with regular updates and advise how you can get involved with the programme.

Our aim is to make sure business support funded by Government is simple for business to access, has a real impact on public policy goals and represents value for money.

If this is the first time you’ve heard about BSSP, there is further information’ at the end of the Newsletter where you’ll find a link to the BSSP web page and our introductory document. 

The BSSP Stock-take meeting held in London on 5th June

Some of you will have been involved in the BSSP’s recent Matching Aid exercise, designed to capture information on a sample of the current range of publicly funded business support schemes available around the country. 

The aims of the exercise were:

• to assess whether the proposed future portfolio of business support product and service offers being developed as part of the Programme is appropriate;
• to identify any gaps in coverage; and to identify areas of the portfolio that are particularly robust.  
• to improve our understanding of the business support landscape and potential options for scheme mergers and rationalisation in the future.

More than 100 Local Authorities took part in the exercise, 8 of the 9 Regional Development Agencies and central Government Departments.  This gave us a sample representing over £1 billion of the total £2.5 billion spent on publicly funded business support.  In terms of numbers of existing schemes, the sample size collected in this pilot exercise is estimated at between 5 and 10%.

The results of this exercise were discussed in detail at the BSSP Stock-take meeting held in London on 5th June. It was great to see an audience of over 100 attendees from across the country, representing business organisations such as the CBI and Chambers of Commerce,  Regional Development Authorities, Local Councils, Government Offices and central Government Departments.  This cross section gave us some excellent pre-consultation feedback and options for moving forward.

For those who couldn’t make the event, we hope to see you in the future.  In the meantime, see the summary and key statistics used as the basis for discussions.

Simplifying Business Support: A consultation

The Chancellor made a commitment to consult in the 2007 Budget and the consultation published today outlines and seeks views on the business support government might fund in the future. It sets out the role of Business Link as the primary route to publicly-funded business support and seeks views on how Business Link can be developed to play this role. Finally, it seeks views on how to avoid business support schemes proliferating again once they have been simplified.

Please read the document and reply by email to SimplifyingBusinessSupport@dti.gov.uk by Friday 14th September 07.

Next issue

In the next update we’ll let you know how you can get involved in consultation events being held in your region.  

BSSP Web page

Find out the latest BSSP information, background material and dates for your diary by clicking on our web page:

There is a background document: “Simplifying Business Support – an introductory document”.

We hope that you’ll find the above information useful.  In the meantime, please look out for the next update Newsletter, which will issue in late July.

Please contact the team at:

simplification.programme@dti.gov.uk