Lifestyle After Business Link

Lifestyle After Business Link

Lifestyle After Business Link

Inside the last few a few months as the Coalition Authorities in the UK has struggled to deal with huge deficits and other financial matters left out by the previous government, one of their lesser known decisions is very swiftly about to have a significant impact on the small world of business. This decision is to take out the Organization Link service as from the 25th November, a decision which for a lengthy set of reasons, is heading to prove a very detrimental step indeed.

Preceding to the arrival of the organization Link service across the UK in the mid 1990's one could rightly argue that the exact level and standard of advice being given to start-ups was pretty much of a post code lotto. Many so called Business Agencies that were working at that time were no more than one man businesses, practically in many cases as the number of women working in this sector was very small. Even more difficult was the fact that many of these Agencies were staffed by people who had little or no self employment experience.

The introduction of Business Links changed all this significantly and then for the last 12-15 years or so the range and general quality of services available across the country have better well hidden. Unfortunately one of the true weaknesses of the Business Link system is that it is a national body, although with regional influences and differences, and one of their problems has recently been their relatively poor advertising performance and their lack of ability to achieve much more than 15% of total start-ups each year. Naturally Organization Links have, country wide, provided advice, information and training workshops for many thousands and thousands of new business start-ups.

Lifestyle After Business Link

The recent general political election in britain and the obligated requirement to concentrate on cutting the huge financial deficits, has caused the new government to determine that the Business Hyperlink system is unsucssesful and that it should be closed down. In making this decision I believe the government has believed all the wrong people, those who because of their public profile experienced a very disproportionate effect on your decision process. Civil Maids and Dragons Den type entrepreneurs are not the people the Government really should have been listening to. They will should have been chatting, and listening, to people like me, a supplier of services on part of Business Link, and lots of others with this problem, and they should have talked to the many thousands of individuals that have benefitted from the fantastic array of advice, information and support, much of it for free, that has helped many thousands of new business start-ups succeed. They would have given the federal government a very different view of the value of Business Hyperlink. My very own Business Link East certainly has been one of the most successful of all of them and the idea that all this expertise is actually heading to be lost very soon is very thinking. Unfortunately there is now nothing you can do to stop or reverse this bad decision and my get worried is actually that we could easily revert to the sort of post code lotto that existed before.

Little or nothing which i have read about the new Local Business Partnerships leads me to feel that they shall be able to plug the huge space in small business support services across the UK.

The simple truth is that most start-ups want sensible advice, guidance and information from people who are experienced start-up practitioners and a lot of this valuable expertise will now be lost to them.

In our own way my business partner and i also want to help to plug this gap which is why our company is setting up a new online business to handle the many simple questions that many start-ups want answers to whilst also offering a company support package to existing small business owners who want to stay in business but find it difficult to find you a chance to deal with all the mundane items that comes across our desks all so often. However this article is about much more than an evident plug for our new service. I am a little business owner and I actually know the fantastic job that Business Links have done and will continue to do till they disappear in November. Many of these a waste of both knowledge and talent and once gone will probably be very difficult to replace it!!

I would welcome views and comments regarding this important subject, especially from people who have experienced what Business Links can and have offered.