Government Invitation

On Monday 22 of October; Sharon and I were invited to attend a meeting with The Secretary of State, The Rt Hon John Hutton MP, The Minister of Competitiveness, Stephen Timms and various representatives from EMDA amongst others to discuss the shaping of renewed Government Policies to encourage entrepreneurship and support SME's.

This was one of a series of such discussions being held across the UK where a small selection of representatives, including Vision, were asked their views on the following

• Achieving Business Growth
• An environment that supports growth
• The role of enterprise as a tool for closing gaps between regions and social groups
• Encouraging entrepreneurship
• International and European challenges and opportunities

It was a most interesting discussion, and as always time slipped away to quickly. However in our opinion 3 key issues were presented for Government consideration

1. Entrepreneurs and SME owners / managers spend in excess of 50% of their total Training / Development budget on non accredited courses (difficult to acquire LSC funding, which is the point); which they have identified as being essential for their Business growth. The majority found specifically tailored training relevant for their individual business needs; difficult to procure as the vast majority of Training providers offer generic training, the old one course suits all. Well unfortunately this approach does not suit the needs of SME's who are aware that specifically tailored training is the most cost effective way of development, growth and increased profitability.(hello, this is what we specialise in). They also stated that the need to have this training and or Mentoring is one of the top 2 priorities facing the entrepreneur / SME especially in terms of recruitment and retention of staff.
2. The need for entrepreneurs SME owners to have access to a small business loan system which is easy to access and is provided by an Organisation (Government ?) which understands the entrepreneur SME. The feeling that today's avenues of finance are somewhat lacking in imagination, innovation and a certain amount of risk were discussed at length. We feel a medium must be found if the Governments objective of creating an enterprise culture is to have any chance of success.
3. Sharon proposed that so many Organisations exist to help business development that it difficult to keep abreast of who can help with what. Sharon described these as small lights of help, where as most entrepreneurs SME's would prefer a light house to contact with a light house keeper who could understand the situation and direct you accordingly in the proper direction