I’ve been a member of the Board of Start and Grow UK since 2016. The organisation at the time was called the Cavendish Consortium and was a ‘not for profit’ organisation founded by some of the leading Enterprise Agencies around the country. The primary objective of the organisation was to deliver programmes across mostly England but to deliver those programmes with a regional and local perspective. The first programmes delivered were ‘Ready for business’, helping businesses obtain start-up finance along with the Growth Vouchers programme.
Cavendish were in the process of delivering the Start and Grow programme and the funder the Department of Business and Trade (then BEIS) wanted some external perspectives on the Board to help with programme management and delivery. They appointed two Non Executive Directors to join the Board and I was selected to be one of them. Start and Grow focussed on helping people plan, start and sustainably grow businesses in some of the most economically challenged parts of the country.
It set out to work with individuals who sought to employ people to grow their businesses. Businesses were provided with start-up and growth support over a three year period. The project started in 2015 with the final participants joining it in 2018. The delivery parts of the project ended in 2020. The evaluation attempted to track the progress of these firms for 5 years.
Overall, the project showed very strong evidence of success.
– The two main performance targets were exceeded
– 4,821 jobs were created over three years of the programme by the 1,619 participating firms (against a target of 3,900 (FTEs)
– over £49m of private sector investment was secured by the new and small firm participants (against a target of £48m)
– The great majority of the businesses participating felt that the programme contributed to their success
– Most compellingly, the businesses on the project significantly outperformed the standard business population in terms of business survival, especially those businesses continuing to trade beyond 3 years, despite operating in some of the most disadvantaged parts of England.
After a lot of hard work from the Board and delivery teams within the founder organisations we succeeded in delivering the programme with some impressive results. In fact it was heralded as one of the most successful business support programmes of the era, particularly when considering the challenges that we faced.
Following the delivery of Start And Grow, the government awarded Cavendish two pilot programmes as part of the ‘Business Basics‘ programme after a series of open competitions.
Administered by Innovate UK on behalf of BEIS. The fund aimed to build evidence on how to encourage SMEs to adopt productivity boosting technology and/or management practices.
The first of these programmes was entitled Business Boost. The trial considered how management training can improve productivity in micro and small firms.
The second was created in collaboration with the team of Lancaster University School of Management and was entitled Evolve Digital this was praised by the Enterprise Research Council who independently evaluated the programme and also by the University of Cambridge who thought the programme was an impressive way to increase digital adoption in small businesses.
After the delivery of these programmes we rebranded the organisation as Start and Grow UK and I succeeded our Chair Doug Scott in 2023.
In 2025 we signed a strategic delivery agreement with the National Enterprise Network one of the original founder members of our organisation. This is to further enhance our delivery capability offering a nationwide coverage of quality delivery and regional and local level.
With Alex Till Chair of the NEN following the signing of our agreement in The Shard London
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