Business

(asked on 11th February 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what definition of scale-up businesses her Department uses; and what steps she is taking to support those businesses.


Answered by
Paul Scully Portrait
Paul Scully
This question was answered on 24th February 2020

We define scaleups using the OECD definition of high growth, i.e. an enterprise with a cumulative average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three-year period, and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the period.

Scaleups play an important role in the UK economy: they generate around 20% of all turnover in the economy and around 15% of employment, and Scale Ups can play a role in driving innovation. The number of scaleups has risen overall by 25% over the 5 years to 2018 to 33,860.

We have taken a number of actions to create the right conditions for businesses to achieve their potential to grow to scale, including:

  • Supporting over £7bn of finance to over 91K smaller businesses through the British Business Bank (as at June 2019).
  • improving the support available through local Growth Hubs to help businesses to overcome the challenges they face in scaling up; and
  • using cutting edge data science techniques to identify high potential firms and connect them the right help at the right time.
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