Flora Hamilton, Executive Director of the Small Business Charter and CEO of the Chartered Association of Business Schools
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has put a powerful idea at the centre of the national conversation; that growth – good growth – is built locally, and that support for business works best when it is delivered close to the firms it serves.
Drawing on Greater Manchester’s experience, where local growth hubs have offered businesses tailored, on-the-ground support, he has made the case for backing local business support and trusting the places that know their own economies to help them grow.
It’s an argument that resonates strongly with us, because we see the power of exactly that kind of localised support every day.
It’s first important to look at the backdrop. The UK has a long-standing productivity gap against top performing G7 peers – but that gap isn’t only about infrastructure or capital. A meaningful part of it comes down to low awareness of the behaviours that make leaders successful and too little knowledge sharing between firms. These gaps hit SMEs hardest; many smaller firms have never had access to structured leadership development, and few leaders get the space to step back and work on the business rather than in it.
Closing that gap – leader by leader, place by place – is exactly what the Small Business Charter (SBC) was created to do. Established ten years ago by the Late Lord Young, the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (now DBT), and the Chartered Association of Business Schools, the Small Business Charter signposts small business leaders to accredited business schools in their region with the expertise to help them thrive. Since its establishment, SBC-accredited schools have delivered a series of programmes for government, including Leading to Grow, the Small Business Leadership Programme and, for the past five years, the Help to Grow: Management Course.
That course is now the flagship. More than 60 SBC-accredited business schools across every region and nation of the UK deliver it; more than 14,000 small business leaders have enrolled and nearly 12,000 have completed it. Leaders don’t work through it in isolation: they sit alongside others from their area, build a growth plan with a mentor, and stay connected through an alumni network that keeps meeting locally long after the course ends – 61% of completers remain engaged through it.
The evidence of its impact is encouraging. Three quarters of completers have reported the course increased their business’s resilience to external economic shocks. Over nine in ten stated they came away more confident leading and managing their business – and 90% had shared what they learned within six weeks of finishing, spreading better leadership practices through their firms and networks.
And because it is delivered locally rather than from a single centre, it reaches the places and people other schemes often miss. Seven in ten participants are based outside London and the South East. Four in ten are women – more than double their share of UK SME leadership – and, at 14%, the proportion of participants from ethnic minority backgrounds is likewise around double the SME average.
What’s more, the course is a door, not a destination. Our research has found that 81% of business leaders said their first interaction with a university came through a business school, and government-backed programmes such as Help to Grow: Management are the most common first point of contact. Once through that door, leaders connect into a wider ecosystem of support: Knowledge Transfer Partnerships that help firms translate ideas into innovation, R&D collaboration, and hands-on guidance from academics with tangible specialist experience working with and on small businesses.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Prime Minister’s own city region. Greater Manchester is now the UK’s fastest-growing city region, with productivity growth outpacing the national average for more than a decade – and its universities, working hand in hand with the region’s Combined Authority and industry on initiatives like Made in Greater Manchester, are central to that story.
This is what makes business schools and their universities such pivotal anchor institutions in their local economies – attracting businesses, investors and talent to our cities, regions and nations, and critical to the Government’s growth mission. When a leader in Glasgow, Liverpool or Coventry sharpens how they run their business, the benefit stays in that place – in the jobs they protect, the people they develop, and the local firms they work with.
That is the real power of localised business support. It turns national ambition into local change and builds capability that stays in a region. We look forward to supporting thousands more SME leaders across the UK to achieve their full potential and play their part in delivering good growth for the country.