Meeting of the Parliament 22 May 2019
We should put examination of the performance of business gateway in the context of the growth in new enterprises. Since 2007, the number of registered businesses in Scotland has increased by nearly 17 per cent and, as of March 2018, there were 343,000 SMEs. The latest five-year survival rate of start-ups in Scotland is the same as the UK average, at 44 per cent.
Part of the increase over the past 11 years is a result of our university sector. Scotland’s universities are empowering spin-off companies from the inventions and knowledge that are obtained from university research, and universities in Scotland are doing that far more than those in any other part of the UK.
We found that business gateway plays a key role in growing the number of new businesses. The Federation of Small Businesses recognises that, and has said that one of the strengths of the Scottish system is that start-ups have access to a wide range of business support—wider than is available elsewhere in the UK.
The FSB agreed with the committee’s finding that business gateway is
“a generally good national advisory service with high satisfaction rates”.
That said, it also highlighted that
“there are ... differences in quality around the country.”
That difference in quality is difficult to measure because, as the committee found, there is a lack of transparency. There is no readily available published information on targets, performance against those targets or budget allocations for business gateway at local authority level.
In its submission, the FSB stated:
“Significant improvements are required around governance, transparency and scrutiny of the national service.”
What it has said in respect of transparency is in stark contrast to what committee members found when we visited Ireland. We in Scotland should consider using the Irish model if we want to improve our approach. In Ireland, targets and budgets are published regularly.
I will briefly outline the set-up in Ireland. The country has one overarching agency—Enterprise Ireland, which is the equivalent of Scottish Enterprise—and 10 county enterprise offices that are operated by councils and carry out Enterprise Ireland’s work locally. Each local enterprise office must publish local targets, priorities and spend. The targets are agreed with and monitored by Enterprise Ireland. Each local enterprise office produces a local annual report, which provides an economic baseline and transparent targets.
On top of that, the local enterprise office co-ordination unit, which is run by Enterprise Ireland, publishes an annual impact report that details the key results and initiatives of each of the local enterprise offices. Enterprise Ireland regularly meets local authority managers in order to monitor the work that is being undertaken locally and to offer any support that it can.
While searching online, I found the development plan for the local enterprise office in Donegal, which covers the period from 2017 to 2020. The 60-page document profiles the county, what it wants to achieve and how it intends to do so. There is a set of metrics on how well it is performing in creating jobs, increasing the number of start-ups, offering support for existing businesses and so on.
We can compare that with what the committee found in relation to business gateway, which had published only one benchmark: the number of business gateway start-ups per 10,000 of the population.