Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support the self-employed in Nottinghamshire.

Our Industrial Strategy sets out a long-term plan to boost the productivity and earning power of people throughout the UK. To support this, we have a network of 38 Growth Hubs across the UK. The D2N2 Growth Hub, which serves the Nottinghamshire area is led and governed by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

D2N2 Growth Hub provides a local single point of contact for all businesses, no matter their size or sector, to access business advice from across the public and private sectors, at a local and national level. In October 2018, the D2N2 LEP self-reported that the D2N2 Growth Hub has supported 6,770 businesses and helped 1,231 individuals start a business since its launch in 2014, of those individuals 281 were from Nottinghamshire and 350 from Nottingham City.

The Government-owned British Business Bank offers start-up loans to entrepreneurs wishing to start a business. From launch of the programme in 2012 to 30 September 2018, a total of 361 start-up loans with a value of £2 million were advanced to businesses in

Nottingham City. The equivalent figures for Nottinghamshire are 457 loans with a value of £3.5 million.