Debate: Business support and funding

Businesses of all sizes need help and funding to grow. But what’s the best route to take? We gathered our expert panel for a discussion at the Samlesbury Hotel hosted by Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth Hub and asked them to share their journeys.

How would you define business support?

Andrew Leeming:

I want to challenge the notion that public sector business support is passive. We’ve got to be smart in how we make our investments and find ways of accessing the absolutely amazing talent in Lancashire, discover what their barriers to growth are and what we can do in partnership with those businesses to go off and do amazing things.

Philip Hargreaves:

We should be providing clear support and advice to businesses in helping them to understand how to access funding.

Sue Haslem:

We often have conversations with our customers that ask ‘have you looked at grant funding?’ particularly when they’re looking to create jobs.

Philip Hargreaves:

Banks still provide 80 percent of all funding that goes into commercial businesses. Our job is to help businesses understand what else is available when the bank has done its job.

Andrew Leeming:

We are really clear that we have private sector partners delivering absolutely superb business support to the business community. There is some cynicism around the whole business support landscape and that includes public and private, and what we need to do is create conversations that are relevant.