Small business agency to face radical overhaul

Small Business Agency ineffective, admits chief

Financial Times, June 20th, 2006

“State-funded support for small business is ‘incredibly complex’, ‘inaccessible’, ‘inefficient’ and ‘ineffective’, the head of the government agency charged with representing the sector has admitted.
“Martiny Wyn Griffith, chief executive of the Small Business Service, suffered an intense grilling from the Public Accounts Committee yesterday. The MP’s queried the rationale for the SBS surviving, given that the National Audit Office warned last month that the agency could not say what the £2.6 billion spent each year on supporting small businesses was achieving.

Finding Funding 

The task of finding funding to support the establishment and growth of Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) is one of the hardest tasks that we have ever been involved with. So many worthwhile cases, put up by really dedicated and very knowledgeable people, just cannot get the requisite funding for one reason or another. But if it is so tough why have we chosen to become engaged in this arena?

The Budget - 21 March 2007

Selective Finance for Investment in England

DTI official statistics publication – latest Annual Report.
In the year ending March 2006, businesses in England have accepted over 400 grant offers totalling in excess of £80m.

The Grant was replaced in January 2009 by the Grant for Business Investment GBI, and no statistics are yet available for this Grant

RSA Wales official statistics publication – latest Annual Report

In the 7 years to end March 2006, businesses in Wales have accepted 1173 RSA grant offers totalling  £650m. These offers relate to projects with planned investment of £2.83bn with the aim of creating or safeguarding over 70,000 jobs.