Dear DBIST: Britain’s smallest businesses have a message for ministers

Britain has a new prime minister, a new government department and, according to millions of small business owners, a fresh opportunity to start getting things right. Emily Whitehead and the team at Simply Club have written an open letter to the newly created Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), setting out a straightforward challenge. Stop treating Britain’s smallest firms as an afterthought. Micro businesses account for around 95 per cent of all private enterprises in the UK, yet too often they are grouped together with much larger companies, overlooked by policymakers and excluded from support schemes designed with entirely different businesses in mind. Their message is simple: if ministers want growth, they need to start with the firms that keep Britain’s communities alive.

Here’s Emily Whitehead and the Simply Club’s wish list for DBIST from micro businesses in Britain.

Dear DBIST,

At Simply Club, we’re in the business of helping business do better for people places & planet.

This week we all have a new prime minister and businesses have a new department. According to the Lord Privy Seal’s statement this week, ‘the Department for Business and Trade will be renamed as the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST). It will take on responsibility for the science and innovation portfolio, as well as emerging sectors. This will align our science and research base directly with commercial application and job creation.’

So while the dust settles and people get their feet under the table and shuffle priorities, we have a wish list for micro business in Britain:

Data – in order to best serve any sector, support any group in society or provide high value help, the UK needs consistent, robust data about the ‘state of micro business’ in the country. The ERC so great work in this field but we need a clear, universal process of data gathering that provides meaningful intel on this crucial business community.

Language – we would like to see government routinely using the correct language when they describe the businesses they seek to support. If support is scattered across the ‘SMEs’ of the UK, we risk support being ill targeted, unsuitable for micros or worse, ignoring micros all together.

Targeting – we would like to see meaningful intervention because micros have very specific barriers, challenges and support requirements that both need to be better understood and better served by any government support or incentives. Despite a huge rise in entrepreneurship and solo businesses being set up; women founded businesses having a higher success rate but woefully lower investment rates and those from disadvantaged, neurodiverse or minority communities having an even tougher route to business ownership, the smallest businesses in Britain are still lumped under generalist or ‘big business’ support initiatives (which are often brilliant but not always appropriate).

Universal access to help – business support in the UK can often be brilliant but is also a postcode/sector/growth potential lottery. We’d like to see something more equitable. Too often business support is sector specific or dependent on growing headcount or bottom line by a pre-determined amount. Support has increasingly become postcode specific too. Grants available 2 miles from where there are none. Courses available in cities but not for rural business and so on.

Financial equity – without any political perspective here, micro businesses are often carrying a greater financial burden compared to their bigger business counterparts, restricting growth potential, increasing failure rates & reducing their ability to take on additional staff. Examples include VAT rates for hospitality businesses, business rates for small independents, supply chain costs for micro businesses, the costs of employment & gaining access to high quality paid for business support.

Recognition & celebration – finally we’d love to see DBIST and government (with universal data gathering & the correct language!) fully recognising & understanding what sort of businesses really make up 95% of all private enterprise in the UK and the part they play in creating healthy, vibrant & sustainable communities, lives and employment, not to mention creativity, artisan skills, latent entrepreneurial activity for the future and additional income to help the young buy homes & build lives.

With many thanks DBIST,

Emily & team at Simply Club.

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