From a self-employment perspective, GEM measures opportunity versus necessity statistically, and opportunity outplays necessity. Undoubtedly, there are people in the economy who do not choose self-employment as a first priority, but in rural areas often there is no choice. Instead of saying that they are doing it because they have to so we should not be helping them, we should be engaging with them and finding out how we can support them to build a stronger way of employment. Even if it ends up that they are only creating their own job, that is still valuable, particularly in a rural context.
GrowBiz, which operates in rural Perthshire, is the only model of its kind in Scotland. We are a community-based enterprise support organisation, we are independent and we provide the support very much from a perspective of helping businesses to engage with each other and support each other. It is a peer support model and there is a mentoring programme within it. There are a lot of different ways in which we support the businesses. It ends up becoming a very sustainable local economy, because they all feel part of a community of business, which is very important for their sustainability.
Survivability rates are very high. The last time we measured, over 90 per cent of the businesses that we have worked with in the past five years are still operating. They might be just one, two or three people, but in a rural context that is critical. The multiplier effect of having 100 businesses turning over £30,000, £40,000, £50,000 in a rural context is much greater than the effect of having one with a £3 million, £4 million, £5 million turnover, which would be unusual in most rural areas.
From a rural perspective at the self-employment and micro-business level, the only source of support in most areas is the business gateway. The business gateway is very centralised, so it rarely provides outreach support or goes to where people need it. Probably more importantly, it also does not really value most self-employed occupations, so it dismisses businesses too readily. We have many clients coming to us at GrowBiz and saying that they have been to the business gateway but been told basically that they are not worthy of support, which I think is appalling, because we are putting off so many people who have potential.
It is not necessarily the business gateway operator’s fault that that is happening. I think that the business gateway contract is not fit for purpose in 2018. It is an approach that is very similar to the one that we were taking to supporting business 15 or 20 years ago. It is a transactional approach, it is minimal and it misses out on a lot of opportunity and potential because of the way it works. I do not think that it is the operator’s fault; we just need to rethink it.
Perhaps controversially, I would say that we missed an opportunity in the enterprise and skills review to review how that worked. That would have been a chance to take a more radical approach to how we support business. It is not that it is more costly. We have costed out how GrowBiz operates. We have supported 300 businesses in the past year, which works out at about £700 or £800 a business, but the business gateway cost is about £1,100 or £1,200 a business, so it is not about cost. You can create a really effective relational model of business support that works, and if you do it in a facilitative way at a local level, it does not need to cost a lot of money.
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