Scottish Enterprise area: Business Gateway
A consistent theme from the Action Plans was the need
for simplified and streamlined access to public sector
business support services. At national level, there is now
a single Business Gateway. This builds on the success of
the Small Business Gateway and delivers streamed access to
information, creates common branding of services and helps
remove any overlap or duplication in service provision.
Scottish Enterprise, COSLA, the FSB, Chambers of Commerce,
the Glasgow Economic Forum and the Scottish Executive have
all been involved in this work.
The aim is to balance local services and delivery
mechanisms that meet local needs but within a national
framework and avoid compounding the very customer confusion
and duplication which the Forums were set up to address. A
Scottish Enterprise-led Expert Group, which involves
representation from the key players in the process, has
taken forward a range of operational issues, including
Business Gateway branding, the precise balance between core
and discretionary services and the roles and
responsibilities of the individual Gateway partners in each
Forum area. Access the Business Gateway website
here.
Links to the three reports of the Business Gateway
Expert Group can be found below:
First
report of the Business Gateway Expert Group
Second
report of the Business Gateway Expert Group
Third
report of the Business Gateway Expert Group
Highlands and Islands Enterprise area: a Single Entry
point
In the HIE area there was also consensus of support in
the action plans for streamlining and improving access to
services. There is now a single entry point to business
support services in a way which meets the needs of
businesses in the HIE area.
This will potentially deliver real and radical change
and improvement in HIE services. This includes a
Network-wide customer database, major changes to the
process for approving small grants, reviewing the number of
products and programmes available, and branding of
services.