berr and the smaller business
Rationalising assistance for the
SME community may simplify access,
but will it be effective?
The Informed Executive considers the changes being made by the Government to streamline
assistance for the smaller business and challenges the potential benefits of key elements of the
package with the Head of Enterprise Directorate at BERR.
When a local authority was persuaded to run a part-time course on managing
small businesses, it published a prospectus which opened with the words . . .
“Conditions have never been more difficult for the small business. The
difference between survival and going out of business is an ever decreasing
one. While large organisations can employ sophisticated management
techniques, a small enterprise depends totally on a few key personnel. This
course is designed to help the management of small and expanding firms
apply modern techniques to their own businesses.”
It is probably not worth readers phoning The much larger entity, as had been the view in
Informed Executive for details of how they can Whitehall for generations.
book their place on the course as it started in In establishing the Small Firms Information
September 1974. Centre within the Department of Trade, White-
There is a sense of déjà vu about that intro- hall had taken the first of many initiatives over
duction, as no-one at the time could remem- the next three decades and more, to assist the
ber conditions for SMEs being so difficult. The small and medium enterprise.
UK economy was in the grip of a recession; ‘Assist’ is perhaps a better word than ‘sup-
there had been a three day week a few months port’ which has about it an air of impending
earlier, and the FTSE All Share Index was hov- failure and bail-out rescues, as in ‘Support for
ering around the 130 mark (compared with the car industry’.
1750-1900 early in 2009). There has to be a clear distinction drawn
Feelings had been running high a few between the re-financing of the banking sec-
months earlier about the rising cost of petrol, tor – which is ‘support’ in its most literal sense
which had reached a staggering 50 pence a – and programmes of assistance for the SMEs
gallon – about 11 pence a litre. And to com- which help entrepreneurs marshal and man-
plete the topical comparisons, the Ministry of age their assets more effectively.
Transport had imposed a 50 mph speed limit
on single carriageway roads. So, nothing new
there.
Taking the concept forward
Once there was proper recognition of the role
Small firms something different
of the smaller business within the UK economy,
there was no looking back, with every con-
The Government had at least come round by ceivable initiative from grants for training
that time to the idea that small businesses through to tax breaks and a more relaxed regu-
were a recognisable species of commercial latory regime. The Government’s own estimate
animal; not simply a low-turnover version of a of 3,000 publicly-funded schemes supplied by
66
The Informed Executive
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