Good morning, everyone. First, I would like to apologise: I am suffering from the tail end of a cold, so I am a little bit craighly.
It is more than 10 years since the previous enterprise review resulted in the transfer of management and delivery of the business gateway service from Scottish Enterprise to local government. In that time, the service has been extended across the whole of Scotland and has supported more than 99,000 people to start businesses. As a consequence, it has supported the creation of more than 100,000 jobs.
However, business gateway is not just there to support start-ups—it also supports existing businesses, especially those that have the ambition and the potential to grow. The service is intended to provide support to all businesses, whatever stage they are at: it is the mainstream support service. That support includes provision of online content, workshops, adviser time and—dependent on certain criteria being met—growth support. Last year alone, business gateway supported more than 3,000 growth clients.
The business gateway service is a vital part of the wider business support system, and it works closely with partners to ensure that customers get the right support.
The most important aspect of the service for us is the customer, and we consistently achieve high levels of customer satisfaction— from businesses that are just starting to those that have been trading for more than three years. On customer satisfaction, it was good to see that the findings of the independent survey that the committee commissioned echo those of our own research. I was interested to hear about the survey by the Federation of Small Businesses that was highlighted in a previous evidence session. That survey’s results closely mirrored our survey results.
Over the years, the demands on the service have changed. The evaluation in 2011 resulted in a call for a more flexible and discretionary approach at local level, to which local government has responded. More recently, the Government has placed greater focus on inclusive growth, fair work and underrepresented groups, on which the service is engaged in discussions.
Following the most recent enterprise and skills review, local government and business gateway have continued to work in partnership and collaboration with the enterprise agencies to address the findings of the review and to look at ways in which the business support system can be improved and made simpler to deliver what the customer wants.
Although the service is at the heart of the business support system, it is important to recognise that it and the other elements cannot be looked at in isolation but must be considered together. We are working with our partners to find ways to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.