Business Support Fears After Start-Up Agency Grant Is Slashed
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Summary
An advice agency that has helped hundreds of new businesses set up in the poorest parts of Wales has had its funding slashed following the abolition of the WDA this week. Venture Wales is having its South East Wales grant cut from pounds 1.3m to just pounds 300,000, and will be forced to make 17 of its own staff redundant unless the Assembly Government relents by next week. Other business advice organisations are likely to be in the same position. Venture Wales managing director Philip Cooper said, 'We were given our annual budgets and results of our tender submissions two weeks before the start of the financial year. While we expected small reductions given the rumours in the market, we did not expect the massive cuts in South East Wales. 'We have 1,100 pre-start clients in the system expecting continued support while they launch their businesses, and given our activity rate we would expect a further 500 new start-up clients to be serviced also during this coming financial year. So we have 1,600 clients with whom we would expect to work over the coming year, but we have only been allocated funding for 200. To whom should we refer the hundreds of people who aspire towards entrepreneurship now that we will not be able to service them? The massive cuts seem to be aimed at the delivery end of business support and presumably are a result of a huge diversion of resources away from the tried and tested models which are delivering economic outputs to the new untried and untested Knowledge Bank for Business. This is surely a case of taking the funds away from the new-start firms that need support to the more successful existing firms in Wales whose success confirms they need far less or no intervention.' Last year the Assembly Government revealed details of the Knowledge Bank for Business, a concept that formed one of Labour's top 10 key pledges at the 2003 Assembly election. It involves offering business support to those companies in Wales considered most likely to grow. Plaid Cymru's Assembly Opposition Leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said, 'We were assured that the merger of the WDA would not result in any cut to services - yet only a few days after the merger the cracks are starting to appear.
'Hundreds of businesses in South East Wales will be affected by this drastic cut in funding and possible job losses in an area that desperately needs new business investment. Deprived areas must not be worse off after the demise of the WDA.See the full content of this document
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Business Support Fears After Start-Up Agency Grant Is Slashed
'Rhodri Morgan must act immediately. He must...
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