The Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform (BERR) is leading the Business Support Simplification Programme (BSSP), which aims to reduce the number of business support products and services to less than 100 by 2010: this will reduce customer confusion, and make the delivery of publicly-funded business support more efficient and effective.
Businesses report that the publicly-funded business support offer is too confusing: thus, the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) began work to simplify its business support offer in January 2006. In the 2006 Budget, the Chancellor set out the following vision:
Streamline publicly-funded business support from around 3000 products and services to no more than 100 by 2010 in order to:
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Give the right support to the right businesses
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Improve efficiency and access
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Maximise the contribution to Government’s objectives
To help achieve this target in the East Midlands, the esp Executive have taken on the role of the Regional Simplification Board and have set up a Task and Finish Group to lead the work on simplification in our region. The Group is chaired by Michael Carr (emda), with membership from the East Midlands Business Forum, Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM), the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), Jobcentre Plus (JCP), Nottingham City Council (representing the Local Authorities), Leicester Shire Economic Partnership (LSEP) and Greater Nottingham Partnership (representing Sub-regional Strategic Partnerships), and the East Midlands Universities Association (EMUA).
A regional consultation event was held at Pride Park on Friday 7 September 2007; 185 representatives from businesses, business support agencies and public bodies attended, making it one of the largest BSSP national consultation events. Satisfaction with the event was high and comments collected gave a very strong and unified message to national government about the way forward for business support in the region.
Implementing simplification will be a challenging task. Many decisions are yet to be made at a national level. There are also a number of changes underway in the sub-regional planning and delivery of economic development. What is clear is that any such changes cannot be allowed to reverse the progress on simplifying business support. Any delegation of funding (including European) to sub-regional structures must meet local economic needs, without increasing the number of business support products.
As part of the national BSSP process, each Regional Development Agency (RDA) has been asked to lead on the development of a Transition Plan for their region: in the East Midlands, this will be achieved through the esp, in recognition of the good partnerships already in place. This Transition Plan will be developed in the first half of 2008, and partners will be consulted on a draft Transition Plan during March/April; the Plan will set out how regional partners will work together to implement and manage the emerging national BSSP framework. In preparation for the Transition Plan, the esp Task and Finish Group will be asking regional and local partners to sign up to a set of agreed Principles for how business support should operate in the future.
To date theTask and Finish Group has:
- Mapped regional support, including a response from 90% of Local Authorities
- Developed emda's model into an agreed regional framework for business support
- Undertaken further, indepth analysis on emda's business support model on Workforce Development (led by the LSC) and location assistance (led by Nottingham City Council)
- Embedded the simplification principles into the development of the spending plans for the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund
- Significant progress has already been made with individual Local Authorities in joining up Business Link IDB and start-up activity in the region
The Task and Finish Group is currently:
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Building the work to date into the regional simplification Transition Plan
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Rolling out the Regional Business Support Information System to other partners including funders and deliverers of business support: this is likely to take time to implement, but once completed will allow for joined up relationship management with regional businesses
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Investigating ways to clarify partner roles, in alignment with the Sub National Review implementation process; roles include the design, planning, funding, procurement, and delivery of business support in the region
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Exploring joint marketing of business support, including a joint annual showcase of business support services
The work of the Task and Finish Group is building on internal work already undertaken over the past two years by emda and their Sub-regional Strategic Partnerships (SSPs). This work has taken place in two stages:
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emda’s Business Support Strategy (2005), which sets out the move to a regional provider of Business Link services, in order to reduce back office costs and improve the consistency of front line delivery; in tandem with the work being carried out to develop the Simplification Transition Plan, the Business Support Strategy will also be updated
- Developing a Simplification Action Plan (2006), to simplify the wider business support package; the Simplification Action Plan recommended the consolidation of all information, diagnostic and brokerage, IDB, (or ‘market making’) services under the Business Link brand as the main gateway to business support
National Business Support Simplification Work and Consultation
There is a national simplification process underway, which is trying to bring together national policy aims into a simplified delivery model. A consultation period closed in September 2007: the consultation documentation, together with responses and other simplification information are all available on the BERR website, http://www.berr.gov.uk/bbf/simplifying-business-support/page44805.html.
For an overall assessment of the support currently sanctioned by BERR, go to
http://www.berr.gov.uk/bbf/enterprise-smes/streamlining-government/bssp/page41661.html.
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