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To ensure that all people with potential, regardless of background, have the opportunity to start a business, and to promote enterprise in deprived communities in the UK.
By providing local community based business coaches to promote self-employment, social enterprise and increase business creation and survival specifically to members of social groups under-represented in business start-up and enterprise, that is, people in deprived communities with low levels of business creation who face more and multiple barriers to enterprise. Local Community Business Coaches will work in partnership with relevant partners involved in business and employment services.
The intervention is based on equity grounds. The Government’s enterprise objective is to ensure that anybody with the potential to succeed in business should have the opportunity to do so. But levels of enterprise in deprived places are significantly and persistently lower than in more affluent areas. Self-employment in the most deprived areas is half the rate of England as a whole. Certain social groups are also poorly represented in enterprise. For example, female entrepreneurship is less than half the level of men; certain BME groups have relatively low levels of self-employment; entrepreneurial activity is markedly less common among those who are registered disabled and who have a disability that limits their ability to carry out paid work.
The reasons for this are complex but evidence suggests that the lack of an entrepreneurial culture in certain places and among certain social groups; and the lack of family or professional support available or affordable to such people, are contributory factors. Yet the potential rewards are high - if the highest rates of business activity in the UK were matched in deprived areas ‘there would be an extra 154,694 businesses in the UK. Furthermore, if the UK matched US enterprise rates there would be an extra 1.9 million businesses.
Intensive customer-facing pre-start up support and advice aimed at deprived communities and in particular disadvantaged individuals. Coaches will do this through:
Local Community Business Coaches will provide counselling and coaching services in the heart of a targeted community - usually through an experienced entrepreneur or adviser with some experience of giving advice and support to businesses appropriate to that community. The counsellor would proactively engage with the community, particularly those groups and individuals most disadvantaged. They would also make contact with local businesses and promote connections within the local community. They will provide specialist information, guidance and advice by making links with key social and business support organisations to assist the potential entrepreneur move from claiming benefits to starting a business.
Support under this intervention will be limited and the client will be expected to engage with mainstream business support services within a reasonable period, however, the local coach will remain accessible to the client for some limited aftercare and expertise.
The target groups for this product are disadvantaged individuals. Specific eligibility will be determined locally but is expected to be limited to deprived areas (i.e. within one of the 88 most deprived wards according to the IMD) and/or linked to specific types of deprived community such as deprived rural, coastal, coalfields and deprived urban.