The recently downsized Small Business Service (SBS) ‘will need to do better’ than the old unit to justify its cost, a new parliamentary report has warned.
A report into the service by the public accounts committee (PAC), said that there had been ‘a number of shortcomings in relation to the SBS’s involvement with government regulation’.
The report also said that many small businesses found it difficult to understand and access the various support programmes on offer. It claimed an action plan should be drawn up to cut the number of different programmes from 3000 to fewer than 100.
Mark Prisk MP, shadow minister for small business, said the any ‘simplification’ of the SBS would be ‘meaningless’ if the true cost of red tape for businesses could not be measured.
The SBS was set up in 2000 as an executive agency within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Its aim was to oversee government policies and plans for small businesses. In addition it was supposed to deliver some business support services.
However, in 2006 it was announced that the SBS was losing its executive agency status and would operate as a unit with the DTI’s Enterprise and Business Group.
The new focus would be to concentrate on supporting entrepreneurs, and influence the business environment.
The recent PAC report said that ‘the old SBS failed to convince us that it was contributing cost-effectively’ to government aims, and the new unit would need to do better to show that ‘its benefits exceed its costs’.
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2007
