The voice of 6 million small businesses is being heard
Before becoming Small Business Commissioner, I would visit Whitehall on a weekly basis to represent the views of Enterprise Nation members on topics from tax to trade. Since moving ‘into’ government I have seen how the small business voice is heard and, ahead of the day of celebration that is Small Business Saturday, wanted to share just some of the ways in which entrepreneurial views are represented to inform policy making and programmes.
- Small Business Growth Forum – meeting for the first time last week under the leadership of new Small Business Minister, Minister McDougall, this is a group that is made up of business owners with current members including Martha Keith Tessa Clarke and Gary Parlett as well as business representative organisations. It acts as a channel for the Minister to hear views from the small business market, and potentially for other Ministers too, as topics from across departments have previously been covered including skills and SME procurement.
- Task specific groups – views on a certain topic are secured via taskforces with a recent example being the Digital Adoption Taskforce, formed to include representatives from Intuit, Sage, Xero, who collectively service most of the small business population using cloud accounting, to report on how digital activity can be boosted with its resulting gains. Task groups assemble research and make recommendations. You can see the Digital Adoption one here.
- Backing your Business – a nationwide campaign has just launched with small business at its heart. Real stories will be told of how government support has helped businesses to export, raise money, recruit talent etc. Expect to see this coming to your peer network/media feed/screen soon.
- Programme insights – government funded programmes such as Help to Grow, which has notched up over 13,000 businesses through the course and more than 5,000 matched to a mentor, deliver insights with lessons learned applied to development of existing programmes and to design new ones.
- Expert insights – this very week government officials attended an event hosted by Mark Hart and Stephen Roper that released research on the ‘everyday entrepreneur’ and current state of the market. This is in addition to regular reports released by think-tanks and support providers on how small firms are dealing with certain issues such as Making Tax Digital, fund-raising etc. These are digested within the Department.
- Business Academy – an internal programme within the Department for Business and Trade to deepen understanding of business (large and small) amongst thousands of civil servants.
- SME Safaris – I wrote about the test Safari here. It’s where those making small business policy visit real life founders in their place of trade to see and hear what’s happening on the ground. I’m delighted to report that policy officials found the first visit of value so we are running them monthly in 2026, with the first three SME Safaris being in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland in Jan (working with Dan Wilson), Leicester in February (with visits including to Byron Dixon OBE, Tajinder Banwait MBE, Jennifer Holloway) and Liverpool in March with the excellent Frank Mckenna. If you would like a Safari in your town or region in 2026, please contact me – we are now into planning for post March.
Add to the above, the highly active work of small business rep groups; FSB, Chambers, Enterprise Nation, Family Business, Small Business Britain, IPSE, plus many more who are sector focused. They work every day to ensure the small business voice is heard.
And indeed, so do we at Office of the Small Business Commissioner, with engagement with 3,000+ small businesses, support providers and stakeholders in the past 5 months. This is all with a view to ensuring we continue to make the case of your vital contribution to the UK, and that small firms are considered when it comes to policy, programmes, regulation and funding.
The voice of over 6 million small firms is mighty. On Small Business Saturday, may you roar.