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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what financial support his Department provides to (a) small and (b) start-up businesses in Bolton.

We are working hard to support businesses and entrepreneurs across the UK to ensure they can access the finance and wider support to grow and have the right conditions for companies to invest long-term.

At Budget 2016 we announced reductions in business rates worth almost £9 billion over the next 5 years, included permanently doubling Small Business Rate Relief and extending the thresholds of the relief ensuring the smallest businesses pay no rates at all.

For the 12 month period up to end of March 2017, BBB programmes have facilitated over £6.17m of finance to 76 businesses in Bolton. Within this, the Start-up Loans Company granted 28 loans totalling over £330k.