Small Businesses: Government Assistance

(asked on 31st March 2022) - View Source

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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what further steps they will take to support small- and medium-sized businesses with rising costs.


Answered by
Lord Callanan Portrait
Lord Callanan
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 12th April 2022

The Government is providing a range of support to help small and medium-sized businesses with rising costs. The Government has cut fuel duty for 12 months, raised the Employment Allowance to £5,000, and is zero-rating VAT on energy-saving materials. This builds on existing support, including business rates relief worth £7 billion over five years.

In addition, the Help to Grow programmes enable small and medium-sized businesses to mitigate the effects of rising costs by improving their productivity. Help to Grow Digital will support up to 100,000 SMEs by providing financial discounts covering half the costs of approved digital technologies, up to a value of £5000, to help them boost their performance. Help to Grow Management, meanwhile, is an intensive national training programme designed to improve leadership and management skills. Delivered by leading business schools across the UK, the programme is 90% subsidised by the Government, with participants contributing £750. It will support up to 30,000 SME business leaders to increase productivity, seize investment opportunities and grow their businesses, developing skills in areas such as financial management, innovation and staff engagement.

Reticulating Splines