The Government’s business growth package has brought founders, investors and innovators to Downing Street, where Britain’s entrepreneurs were invited to celebrate a multibillion pound plan by explaining their vision in 300 characters and attaching a forecast.
The package promises tax incentive reforms, long term backing for science and technology firms, changes to public procurement and a 25% reduction in the administrative cost of regulation. This is excellent news for businesses, particularly those whose main product is currently completing forms about why they deserve to exist.
The Government wants companies to start, scale and remain in Britain. A company that grows can hire staff, sell useful things and eventually purchase a meeting room plant with its own LinkedIn profile. The harder task is making the route to growth feel less like an escape room designed by someone who has never escaped anything.
At the Institute of Large Arrows, enterprise adviser Felicity Pitchdeck welcomed the announcement. “We back ambitious people,” she said. “We also require a business plan, a revised business plan and a short note explaining why the revised business plan has not yet become a dashboard.”
Public procurement changes could give innovative firms more opportunities to sell to the Government. That matters. A small company may build something brilliant, but it should not need a minor in archaeology to excavate the tender portal and discover that the contract was awarded to a printer in 2019.
The promised reduction in regulatory administration is valued at £6 billion a year. Businesses could spend that money on staff, equipment or a chair that does not whisper “cash flow” whenever someone sits down. They may even invest it in the revolutionary technology known as an answer that only has to be entered once.
Growth analyst Martin Seedround said scale ups needed investment and talent, then immediately asked whether their innovation had considered becoming a PDF. This is the central challenge facing the package. Ministers can announce fewer burdens. Businesses still have to wait and see whether the burdens receive a new name, a logo and a launch event.
Founders understand the long game. They have built products in spare rooms while describing a shared spreadsheet as an office. Now the Government has offered capital, incentives and a clearer path to expansion. The vision will become reality when the final form stops asking whether the vision has been approved by the final form. Until then, Britain’s fastest growing enterprise is the paperwork explaining why growth has not happened yet.
Source: HM Treasury.
