Review of Glasgow Business Gateway

Business Gateway is the delivery of four core services throughout the Scottish Enterprise Network: a Business Start Up service; Business Information; Business Aftercare; and Business Growth. The evaluation set out to review of the activities of Glasgow’s Business Gateway.

The methodology involved: a review of the available Glasgow Business Gateway CRM data for 2004/05; a review of the business start-up data captured by Glasgow Business Services (GBS) since 2002; analysis of the Glasgow specific business survey data from the Business Gateway Strategic Review; a review of the data on activity in other Gateways and in other comparator areas in the UK; telephone consultations with a representative sample of 100 businesses; a data search to try to ascertain what had happened to those businesses that had proved hard to contact; and consultations with key stakeholders.

The evaluation found that Gateway did not seem to have the volume of activity that it should have, given the size of the Glasgow economy and the comparative performance of other Gateways within the Network.

The evaluation recommended that: GBS should categorise starts using the full postcode and allocate starts to (Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs) using Communities Scotland SIP Atlas; targets for specific activities should be set, based on the Network average performance and penetration; there should be more effective screening and advice to starts at the pre-start stage; SIP starts and starts by those who were previously unemployed should be given greater support; consideration should be given as to the support that should be provided to those businesses whose economic impact is judged to be limited; consideration should be given as to how more intensive support could be aimed at starts with growth potential whilst maintaining the ‘universal support’ ethos; and consideration should be given to targeting start up support at those areas with higher than average levels of residents’ skills and qualifications, both within SIPS and elsewhere within the City.