It’s not controversial to say that it’s been a challenging decade for businesses everywhere – Brexit, the pandemic, rising costs, inflation – it hasn’t stopped.
UK businesses, sole traders and entrepreneurs have continued despite the odds. In 2022 there were around 5.5 million businesses registered in the UK – with a massive 99.9 percent of these being SMEs.
GC Business Growth Hub launched in 2011 in Greater Manchester as the first Growth Hub of its kind and provided the blueprint for a roll out of other Growth Hubs across the country.
Some may feel that ‘Growth’ has become a dirty word against the current economic backdrop – but we see growth as more than just getting bigger or making more profit at the risk of everything else.
If you’ve retrained staff members who were at risk of redundancy – you’ve helped your workforce grow. If you’ve managed to cut waste via new manufacturing process – you’ve possibly grown your margins. And if you’ve cut your emissions, well then, you’re one step closer to saving the planet.
There is no one way to ‘grow’ – but there is always a right way. I see fast growing companies every day, but with new businesses most likely to fail in the first few years, we want to give them the best chance we can.
We support companies of all kinds. A total of 34 percent of the businesses we have worked with are in vital sectors like health services, hospitality and small retailers, while 17 percent are in the creative, digital and tech spaces.
Whilst we support businesses of all kinds, our SME support is second to none – whether that’s linking firms up with local universities to create new products or upskilling staff to close skills gaps. Every change a business makes has the potential to make or break it.
At the end of last year, we looked into the support we offer Greater Manchester businesses and commissioned a report to independently evaluate our impact between 2018 and 2022.
With a return on investment of over 10:1, we are amongst the highest gross value-added business support services in the UK, with £506 million of net economic benefit to be generated by 2025.
During the same period, we helped create 2,537 jobs and safeguarded a further 849. But these aren’t just our wins, they are the wins of thousands of businesses across Greater Manchester.
We don’t have our success without theirs.
It’s fantastic to see the results of this in black and white. I’m incredibly proud of the journey that we’ve been on. As the GC Business Growth Hub team looks to the future, it’s important for us to take the time to reflect. Our work stopped businesses folding and emboldened the ambitions of hundreds of new entrepreneurs.
We couldn’t do it without working with other amazing partners across the region, from GMCA and each of the 10 Greater Manchester Local Authorities to universities as well as national organisations such as Innovate UK Edge, the International Trade team within the Department of Business and Trade and the British Business Bank.
And we definitely couldn’t do it without the amazing businesses that work with us every day. Thank you for helping make Greater Manchester a better place to do business.