A new report published today recommends that the Small Business Service (SBS) is tasked with an enhanced role within Whitehall to boost the quality of services for small firms. The Cross Cutting Review of Government Services for Small Business, conducted jointly by the SBS and HM Treasury, reviews the wide range of services operated by government aimed at helping small enterprises, and increase their efficiency and effectiveness.

The Review's 39 recommendations include that the SBS builds on its success and plays an enhanced role in co-ordinating an improved customer-driven enterprise agenda across Government.

It makes specific recommendations in several areas, including extending enterprise; improving the quality and dissemination of information for small businesses; and improving the coherence of regional and local level support for small business.

The Rt Hon. Paul Boateng, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: "This Review highlights the important role that the small business sector plays in the UK economy in terms of both its sheer scale and the contribution it makes to employment, innovation and competition. Small businesses are a major driver of productivity growth and a key catalyst for the development of local communities."

"To maintain a thriving small business sector, the Government is committed to lowering barriers to enterprise and creating a culture of opportunity for all. Government already spends in the region of £2.5bn a year on a wide range of services for small business. The Review sets out a series of practical recommendations for driving up the quality and effectiveness of these services, with the aim of improving the customer experience for all small businesses.

"Spending Review 2002 provides SBS with additional resources to help them meet the challenges of their new role as a champion for small businesses across Whitehall. The Spending Review provided an additional £40m by 2005-06, compared with 2002-03, to boost e-delivery of services, while the Phoenix Fund is also being extended by two years beyond March 2004 with an extra £50m over 2004-05 and 2005-06 to promote enterprise in deprived areas."

The Review's 39 recommendations are:

1. Government departments to train staff in contact with small firms about the Government's objective of encouraging entrepreneurs: staff should be aware of the support and services available for new firms; this training should be sensitive to regional differences in rates of entrepreneurship.
2. Government 'services' aimed at fostering entrepreneurs should be more consciously designed to help remove barriers for under-represented groups; SBS to lead work on this.
3. SBS should bring forward proposals to increase the reach and effectiveness of the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme provided the changes can demonstrate value for money, to implement the broad thrust of Small Business Investment Taskforce and KPMG recommendations, in particular that: where possible, sector exclusions are removed the scheme is simplified, it is marketed effectively to encourage greater take-up by finance providers and small businesses alike.
4. SBS should act as a focal point for government research on barriers to enterprise for under-represented groups.
5. SBS to give clearer instructions to Business Link Operators (BLOs) on how to acknowledge diversity in their business delivery and ensure best practice in delivering BLO services are spread to all.
6. SBS to redefine BLOs' targets to encourage them to engage the local community, creating an inclusive and approachable reputation, and using intermediaries where these are better at providing business services to specific groups.
7. RDAs should work with Local Strategic Partnerships, using regeneration funds where relevant, to pioneer novel approaches to barriers for specific groups of local entrepreneurs.
8. SBS and Inland Revenue jointly should examine the costs and benefits of providing, in a suitably anonymised form, to government departments and expert organisations, on an ongoing basis, existing data available form self-employment registration forms.
9. SBS and ONS should review the questions on self-employment and business ownership in the Labour Force Survey to ensure that all self-employed interviewees are captured in the survey, and to examine the Survey's sample size.
10. SBS and Inland Revenue should examine and report to Ministers whether data on gender, ethnic background and disability status of applicants by postcode could be captured from self-employment registration forms.
11. SBS and Customs & Excise should examine and report to Ministers whether data on gender, ethnic background and disability status of applicants by postcode could be captured via the VAT registration form.
12. SBS to enforce the BLOs contract condition to supply data on the clients receiving 'significant' assistance from BLOs.
13. Government departments to identify separate services which could be combined to provide a single service for small firms - for example, at start-up, or becoming an employer.
14. Departments to set targets which demonstrate progress towards providing quality services for all customers.
15. SBS and the office of the e-Envoy to establish management and governance arrangement for business.gov to ensure that it is developed in conjunction with the main public services for small business; and also will ensure that departments and agencies can base their electronic service delivery projects on a common, practical, research-based understanding of customer requirements, leading to a common look and feel for government information for small firms.
16. Departments and agencies who are service providers for small firms at start-up are to work with SBS to produce a resource pack with comprehensive information about what government wants from new businesses and the newly self-employed and what it can do for them; the pack should be available through multiple private and public sector channels.
17. Local enterprise events to be held: these give new and would-be entrepreneurs information about the help available.
18. Over time, an electronic version of the resource pack to be developed to give more detailed and tailored information.
19. The pack will be underpinned by a common data source available to all issuing it, so that the same advice is given regardless of the agent who gives it.
20. Cabinet Office, with support from the Public Services Productivity Panel Unit to develop guidance on customer-focused delivery and consult widely on the proposals.
21. SBS to develop further its expertise on the small firms sector, to act as a proxy customer and advise departments and agencies on the needs of small firms in designing and implementing policies which impact upon them.
22. To raise awareness and promote culture change, SBS to sponsor a 'special award' for services to small firms within the existing Charter Mark Scheme, with applications judged by a panel comprising small firm representative groups and individual small businesses.
23. Departments to work with HM Treasury in developing further appraisal methodologies which take full account of the costs to SMEs of different forms of service delivery.
24. Departments' targets for measuring progress towards providing quality services for all customers should also measure the extent to which the department has set the customer at the heart of its policy and implementation systems.
25. Whitehall Group to act as a forum to share best practice and ensure that opportunities for joint working that would benefit small firms customers are exploited.
26. Expenditure and service information to be collected again by SBS and HM Treasury before the next Spending Review.
27. SBS to develop and maintain an information quarry on government requirements of, and support for, small firms available for other departments and small firms' advisors.
28. Departments with extensive contact with small firms to train staff to use the information quarry to signpost small firms to other relevant government services.
29. Departments and agencies with call centres to review operational targets to ensure that these do not discourage effective signposting.
30. As an executive agency of the DTI, the SBS's remit is redefined to take account of the importance of small firms' wider interactions with government: it should aim to simplify and improve small firms experience of government.
31. SBS should develop its role as a source of market knowledge and expertise on small firms for national policy makers through its research and evaluation programme and through existing and newly developing networks.
32. The joint chairman of a group of departments and agencies who provide major services for small firms should be a member of the SBS steering board; the group will advise on SBS's annual work programme to improve the quality and flow of information about government services; the group will also be a forum for sharing good practice in customer focus.
33. RDAs and SBS should develop a methodology, so that SBS can build up an aggregate picture of demand and supply for information on services for small business.
34. SBS should continue to develop the brokerage role for BLOs.
35. RDAs should work closely with sub-regional partnerships and Local Strategic Partnerships to share information with small businesses and improve local communication about services for small businesses.
36. SBS, RDAs and partnerships should develop principles of good partnership working.
37. Members of partnerships may adjust their own services in the light of information about what others do, to eliminate overlapping services or fill gaps.
38. RDAs may wish to give sub-regional partnerships budgets for improving information for small firms about what is available; and/or to move from information sharing and provision to positive planning and co-ordination of services.
39. Members of partnerships should also identify any barriers to joint working created by national policies and targets, and pass this information back to the department or agency concerned via the RDA.

The Review can be downloaded in full from the SBS website at and at the Treasury website.