Tag: government funding

New Government Funding to help Women in Business

Gardener

Last weeks ONS figures show more people are becoming self employed than ever before.

Budding female entrepreneurs are set to benefit from superfast broadband with a new £1m challenge fund, enabling them to work effectively, access new markets and grow their business online.

The fund will be part of the Government’s Superfast Broadband rollout and will help women take full advantage of all the opportunities superfast broadband can bring to business. There are 40 local broadband projects in England, already delivering the programme and they will be invited to submit bids to the £1m challenge fund in May 2014.

This forms part of help the Government is already providing to female entrepreneurs, which includes:

  • £1.6 million to support women’s enterprise in rural areas;
  • access to over 15,000 free business mentors; and
  • from next year, the introduction of Tax Free Childcare will mean that, for the first time, many self-employed parents will have access to support with childcare costs.

Are we doing enough to help women in business?

steve@bicknells.net

Grow Online, Expand Worldwide – initiative to help SME’s

e commerce

The government wants to make the UK the best place to start and grow a business. In the autumn it will launch a public campaign to celebrate GREAT British business success stories. The government wants to inspire other small businesses and point them towards the support that can help them grow. It will also launch a new strategy for how the whole of government will back them. This will set out a range of measures to continue helping budding entrepreneurs and existing businesses succeed.

If you are a business interested in the ‘Grow Online, Expand Worldwide’ campaign, please call 02070344848 and speak to a member of the Click:Connect:Sell team.

Just 33% of small to medium-sized companies have a digital presence and only 14% sell their products online. But research suggests that if UK SMEs fully adopted online technologies, they could increase annual turnover by £18.8 billion. Here in the UK we’re twice as likely as the OECD average to buy goods online.

UKTI’s ‘Grow Online, Expand Worldwide’ campaign includes local support for:

  • 4,000 aspiring web exporters through awareness raising sessions, a webinar campaign and international web workshops.
  • 1,200 web export ready businesses through e-commerce masterclasses.
  • 1,500 web exporters with bespoke one-to-one advice from experts, tailored website reviews and action planning to access web exporter vouchers – up to £3,000 matched funding.
  • 600 companies from the UK retail sector to sell online by helping them to list their products on the world’s leading online sales sites including Alibaba in China and Tejuri in the Gulf.

steve@bicknells.net