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Omnibus Survey of Small Businesses in Scotland 2002: Rural Analysis
1 Introduction
Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a very important sector of the Scottish economy. They account for 99% of the 243,000 Businesses (November 2001) active in Scotland and they represent 50% of non-government employment.
The Small Business Service conducts a regular survey of the opinions of the owners of Businesses in England with fewer than 250 employees. For this wave, the fifth, the survey covered the whole of the UK and the Scottish Executive commissioned a boost to the sample in order to generate statistically robust results for Scotland. The survey was carried out between 5 th October and 6 th December 2002. A total of 4,217 Businesses across the UK took part in the survey, including 1,002 SMEs in Scotland.
This report covers the findings for Scottish SMEs and focuses on comparisons between SMEs in rural and non-rural Scotland.
1.1 Objectives
The survey is a listening exercise to:
- Primarily, gauge the needs of small Businesses, their concerns and the barriers to fulfilling their potential.
- Record awareness, perception of, and satisfaction with Small Business Gateway.
- Act as a screening survey for other research such as panel surveys, focus groups or surveys of sub-groups of the small business population.
The aim of this rural analysis is to assess the similarities and differences between Scottish SMEs in three geographic areas: accessible rural, remote rural and urban/small towns. The reason for separating rural into two distinct areas is so that intra-rural differences can be explored. Rural Scotland is defined in accordance with the Scottish Executive's core definition of rurality (see section 3.1).
The rural analysis explores three main areas:
- Characteristics of SMEs
- Issues facing SMEs
- Sources of advice
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