Government making 2024 the "year of the SME"

By Nicky Godding

2 February 2024

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ThinCats to provide up to £300 million additional funding for businesses through British Business Bank programme

The Government is to launch a new Small Business Council next month which will bring together SME leaders from across the country.

The Council will provide a bespoke forum for small businesses to have their voices represented within Government.

Almost every business in the country is a small business (99.9 per cent) which in turn support 27 million jobs across the UK, accounting for £4.5 trillion of annual turnover – which is why the government says it is making 2024 the year of the SME.

In addition to the formation of the Council, the Help to Grow campaign and website has also been refreshed to create a one-stop shop for SMEs to find the information they need to grow and scale up. This will include helping small firms to clearly identify what funding they can access, webinars as well as the basics of setting up a business for the first time.

The new site will bring together the support on offer from the government into one place, making it quicker and more convenient to find the resources business leaders and budding entrepreneurs need to succeed.

This support includes the new Help to Grow management courses as announced in the Autumn Statement. which went live this week. The Help to Grow: Management scheme is an intensive 12-week programme to improve SME leadership and management skills. SMEs from all sectors are able to access the programme that is 90% subsidised by government. This has already supported nearly 8,000 businesses, with the ambition to support up to 30,000 over the programme’s lifetime.

Business and Trade secretary, Kimi Badenoch, said: "Small business are the lifeblood of our local communities and drive the UK's economy.

“This new Council will mean SMEs have a clear voice at the table and we can deliver on the key needs for business."

The government is also tackling a key issue affecting small firms – late payments and launched the Prompt Payment and Cash Flow Review in 2023. Since the report was unveiled, it is looking at how to prosecute large firms who persistently and knowingly fail to adhere to the Payment Practice Reporting Regulations.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.