UK Budget delivers across the board for Scale Ups helping talent, skills, finance and infrastructure.

Meantime, private sector scale up momentum continues apace with targeted programmes launched across the country to support our scale ups and their journeys...find out more below. March has certainly been a month for our UK scale-ups.

I’m pleased to invite you to nominate up to three people from your ’cluster’  to apply to join a very special training course designed to help increase economic growth in your Local Community.   The course will be held on 17th, 18th and 19th May in Birmingham.

This is an opportunity to join an internationally renowned course, that has been attended by high level senior executives responsible for delivering local economic growth in more than 25 countries.

The programme will be delivered by Professor Daniel Isenberg, of Babson College, who is one of the world’s leading authorities on entrepreneurship ecosystems and is a pioneer in developing practical methodologies for fostering entrepreneurship ecosystems leading to successful economic growth.  Sherry Coutu CBE, author of the Scale Up Report, along with leading UK academics, will also be teaching on this course. The Scaleup Institute is delighted to be delivering this in partnership with the Goldman Sachs Foundation and 10,000 Small Businesses UK.  Their generosity enables us to offer eligible executives who work for Local Enterprise Partnerships free tuition, room and board for this course which would cost those participating more than £ 3,000 for the three days if they were to join it in the US where it is usually available.

As part of this intensive course, each participant will produce a plan for stimulating economic growth through a focus on scaling businesses after having considered how others like them have done so in a number of countries around the world as well as the UK.  

In bringing “Driving Economic Growth Through Scale-Up Businesses and Ecosystems” to the UK the aim is to create a programme with lasting and profound change. The programme will support economic opportunity, internationalisation, productivity and help your business community with the growth opportunities and challenges faced.

It has never been a better time to work together to support the growth needs of our fastest scaling businesses and we are committed to working with you to support your local and regional growth businesses and sectors.

We look forward to hearing from you if you can join us for this important course – deadline for applying is noon on the 4th of April.

Apply here:  

http://scaleup-institute-driving-economic-growth-cohort1.eventbrite.co.uk

• Office of National Statistics (ONS)  – Great to see intent from Government to improve ONS data with £10m investment in a new hub for data science and excellence in economic measurement  (aligned to Sir Charles Bean’s  recommendations) to maximise the public value of existing and new data sets with cutting edge techniques to allow the ONS to produce more innovative, accurate and timely statistics. This is very good news indeed as is the pilot work HMRC are undertaking with Growth hubs.

• Kudos is due to the London Stock Exchange for partnering with Duedil to publish the 1000 Companies to admire in Britain:

• The private sector continues to take a lead in supporting British Business in scaling up with Goldman Sachs on the road recruiting into their 10,000 Small Businesses programme

http://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000-small-businesses/UK

• Cambridge launched its “School for Scale Ups” programme of courses   

https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/learning/school-for-scale-ups)  

• RBS launched  Growth Builder to support the UK’s scale-ups who have grown at least 20% a year, have at least 20 staff and £1.5m+ turnover

ENTIQ & UK Business Angel Association, launched  Fin4Fem to help women leaders with  financing options, negotiation, growth strategies, valuation, pitch practice and more!

Apply online at http://www.fin4fem.com. #TogetherWeWill

Access to Markets

The Export Gap: Accessing customers in other markets / home market

• Boris Johnson unveiled a new scheme to support London scale-ups to export. They already have the first 50 businesses who will have the opportunity to join trade missions as well as other support to access international markets.  This is a fantastic initiative and I would urge cities across the UK where there is a critical mass of scale-ups follow this lead.

• Scaling Together Overcoming Barriers in Corporate Start Up Collaboration: the recently published NESTA report explores the barriers to collaboration and their solutions with some key practical recommendations.

• The next stage of work is to gather the leading examples of corporate collaboration from across Europe for others to understand and emulate.  They will publish a Corporate Scale-up Index in June.

The Finance Gap: Accessing the right combination of finance

• Encouraging to see an additional £ 1 bn of support in the Budget to be channelled through the British Business Bank (BBB) and we particularly look forward to the evolution of its Help to Grow programme from spring 2016 supporting at least £200 million of lending to scaling businesses.

• It was also pleasing to see the agreement in the Midlands BBB to create a Midlands Engine Investment Fund of over £250 million.

Read about it here.

• A tax boost for business also came in the Budget with a  series of measures that support scaling businesses including measures for Corporation tax to fall from 20 per cent at the start of this parliament to 17 per cent by 2020; a new threshold for small business rate relief raised from £6,000 to £15,000.; and the a boost to ensuring that companies have the opportunity to access the capital they need to grow and create jobs, through encouraging investment with Capital Gains Tax (CGT) set to be reduced from 28% to 20%, and the basic rate from 18% to 10. In addition, entrepreneurs’ relief will be extended to long term investors in unlisted companies. This will provide a 10% rate of CGT for gains on newly issued shares in unlisted companies purchased on or after 17 March 2016, provided they are held for a minimum of three years from 6 April 2016, and subject to a separate lifetime limit of £10 million of gains.

The Infrastructure Gap: Navigating Infrastructure

• Interesting article in The Globe and Mail about the need for businesses to scale in Canada.  They identified a number of the same barriers/opportunities as the Scale-Up Report including Government and Corporate procurement giving scale-ups access to customers.

• Interesting blog by Nigel Walley, CEO of Decipher Group,  calling for the UK to create a new kind of European Corporate Entity which will dramatically reduce the admin burden and allow companies to easily access the European market.  Interesting idea but would it work in practise?

• It is vital that scale-ups have flexible offices that grow with them so great to see another option for ambitious entrepreneurs in Croydon launched called Tomorrow.  21,000 sq ft of space houses 300 co-working desks, 10 private offices and Digital showcases.

• Establishment of  a new Broadband Investment Fund, in partnership with private sector investors, to support the growth of alternative broadband networks by providing greater access to finance.

• Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP to be supported to develop a proposal for a new Knowledge Quarter in the area around the Curzon Street HS2 station

• The creation of  a new MarineHub Enterprise Zone in Cornwall as well as the setting up of new Enterprise Zones in Brierley Hill in Dudley, Loughborough and Leicester and extending the Sheffield City Region Enterprise Zone. The Enterprise Zones are to be able to offer Enhanced Capital Allowances for eight years following the establishment of the ECA site.

• Northern Powerhouse: gets the green light to High Speed 3 between Leeds and Manchester with £60 million being provided to develop plans for both the Leeds-Manchester route by 2017 and to improve transport connections between cities of the North; accelerating the upgrade of the M62 to a four-lane smart motorway and developing the future transformation of east-west road connections, including a new Trans-Pennine tunnel

• Mayoral devolution deals with the West of England, Greater Lincolnshire and East Anglia, with further  Local Growth Fund allocations worth £2.86 billion in total

Best,