Business Growth Wolverhampton

City of Wolverhampton Council has just been awarded a prestigious ‘best in the region’ award for its support for the local small business community. 
 
Wolverhampton was among 250 councils in England who entered the inaugural England-wide Local Government awards run by Britain’s biggest business representation group, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), and it emerged triumphant in the Future Ready regional category. 
 
Local authorities from all across England responded to the call when FSB launched their inaugural Local Government awards, sponsored by Maybe*, which were aimed at celebrating and recognising those that had made the biggest impact on local SMEs during the Covid crisis and beyond. And Wolverhampton was named as the West Midlands regional champion winners with judges being impressed by the council’s work to help the local small business community by putting in place a series of measures aimed at helping small businesses to survive, revive and thrive after arguably the toughest two and half years of trading.  
 
 Richard Lawrence, Director of Regeneration, said:

"Our Relight Business Programme has supported around 200 sole traders, micro and small businesses. Following our work delivering the Covid grant support programme, we wanted to give local businesses the tools and knowledge to build resilience during the pandemic and grow as the economy opened back up. We did this by running a series of webinars, funded FSB and Chamber membership, carrying out financial and digital reviews as well as business diagnostics, and providing access to a grant to implement recommendations from the reviews. Supporting fantastic local businesses in our city is one of our key priorities as a council and we will continue to do this through projects like our Relight Business Programme."

FSB Development Manager for Staffordshire and the West Midlands, Karen Woolley said:

"It is really pleasing to see the City of Wolverhampton Council rewarded for its hard work and effort to help local SMEs through what has been a very challenging couple of years.  Both the quality and quantity of entries from this region and beyond was incredibly high so Wolverhampton should feel very proud to be among the winners. We look forward to continuing to work with them - and all our other business-supporting councils - to ensure we have a vibrant and strong local SME community."

The Government website provides a search facility allowing you to identify current support most appropriate to your needs. You can search against business stage, sector, number of employees, and nature of support be it advice, grant, loan or equity.

Business Growth West Midlands, of which the City Council is a partner, provides a front door for accessing business support as well as a comprehensive search facility Business Support for business support programmes available to Wolverhampton businesses

For more general advice and information can be found at GOV.UK Business and Self Employed.

Digital

Digital Boost - It can be challenging and lonely to start or run a business, but it doesn’t have to be. This programme can connect you with volunteer experts in strategy, marketing, digital, finance and more for unlimited 1:1 or small-group business mentoring. If you work or lead an organisation with less than 250 employees, you can access resources, advice and information to help your business reach its potential online. The programme pairs small businesses with digital experts from the likes of Google and BT – to equip you with the essential skills to bring, or grow, your organisation online.

Made Smarter

Made Smarter was formed following a nationwide review into UK manufacturing that recommended three key changes: More ambitious leadership; More innovation in developing new technologies;. And faster implementation and adoption of those technologies. The aim is to boost the digital skills of industry leaders, bringing businesses and research development together to develop new technology, and helping makers embrace new digital tools.

Who is Made Smarter for?

• Manufacturing leaders considering how to accelerate their growth.
• Employees looking to upskill.
• Graduates looking to apply their skills.
• Technology providers wanting to support digital tech integration or development.

To find out more and to register to get more support go to https://www.madesmarter.uk/

Employment and Skills

These continue to be challenging times for us all, however we are committed to continuing to provide the best support we can to businesses and jobseekers. We are here to help you plan your current and future workforce needs as you navigate the current  economic difficulties. Wolves at Work business services are ready and available to offer support to businesses looking for assistance on the following:

• Recruitment - we can advertise and promote your vacancies and assist with sourcing new talent through the highly successful Wolves at Work project
• Redundancy support
• Advice on upskilling your workforce to meet future business needs
• Useful connections to further business support

Please don’t hesitate to contact us for recruitment or workforce support: recruitment@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Finance

There is a broad offer of support from the main High Street banks as well as loan and equity support from specialist providers:

• Nat West - Business Builder
• Nat West - Business Support to Account holders
• Nat West Entrepreneur Accelerator
   
• Barclays - Business support for account holders
• Barclays - Business start-up support
   
• TSB - Business support for account holders
• TSB - Business start-up support
   
• Metro Bank - Business support for account holders
• Metro Bank - Business start-up support
   
• Lloyds Bank - Business
   
• Black Country Reinvestment Society - BCRS Business Loans - for businesses with no more than 250 employees and unable to get funding from banks.
   
• Aston Reinvestment Society - ART Loans - for businesses with no more than 250 employees and unable to get funding from banks.
   
• Funding Circle - Business Loans – for sole traders, limited company or partnerships; with at least two years of trading history; and where ownership of the business will remain in the UK.
   
• Midven Capital Partners - Midlands Engine Investment Fund – for SMEs trading business to business across the Midlands Engine area, who are looking to grow but unable to raise all the finance required. 

International Trade

Invest in the UK - Made in the UK and sold to the World here you can find advice and information on beginning to export, developing your export potential, finding the right export markets, making an export plan. Online and phone support available, as well as 1-2-1 meetings. Over 280 market guides available and for further information contact DIT West Midlands – 020 4534 3667.

Low Carbon

The Net Zero Innovation Programme has recently been launched by the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). WMG will bring the delivery of their September programme to Wolverhampton. This free programme offers a cohort-based approach to understanding what net zero would mean and look like for your business. It includes a net zero readiness assessment, a net zero roadmap, collaboration events, a best practice visit, a technical innovation project, and the opportunity to apply for grant funding toward an energy efficiency project (this can be additional to the council's Net Zero grant funding). Underpinning this is an understanding that key to business engagement in the Net Zero journey is helping manufacturing SMEs understand the commercial benefits of decarbonising the workplace. Sustainability is important to businesses but the ultimate drivers for this kind of change are reducing costs, boosting reputation and meeting customers’ growing requirements for a greener supply chain. If you are interested in finding out more please e mail business.development@wolverhampton.gov.uk

GREEN ADVANTAGE - A short course programme designed for business leaders, managers and professionals who want to consider the implications of climate and environmental challenges for their business or workplace alongside maintaining business performance and profitability.  This course will give you the information and skillset to understand environmental sustainability in your business context.

UK Business Climate Hub - The UK government has partnered with business owners and respected climate groups to help businesses cut carbon emissions and protect the planet. Whatever size your business or industry you’re in, your commitment could make a real difference – to your business, to your customers, to your community, to the planet – and to your energy bills!
That’s why the UK government has created the UK Business Climate Hub, a campaign that asks UK small businesses of up to 250 employees to join the fight against climate change by committing to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. We all want to create a better planet, but it can be hard to know where to start. Through this commitment, join other businesses, get tips, make a plan, and be confident that you are really making a difference to the planet and to your business.

Management Development 

Be the Business Mentoring Programme - A mentoring support programme that can focus across the business or on specifics such as digital, leadership, workforce, sales or growth. This can be run as a 12 week or a 12-month programme and to be eligible a business must have been trading for at least a year with at least 3 FT employees. The website also hosts useful templates and guides for managing and growing a business

Help to Grow Management Course - This management training programme gives access to 12-weeks of learning designed to fit alongside work commitments; helps you develop a bespoke business growth plan to help your business reach its full potential; provides 1:1 support from a business mentor; and helps you learn from peers and network with businesses just like yours. The programme is 90% funded by the government so a business only pays £750

Manufacturing

Manufacturing Growth Programme - A dedicated, experienced, Manufacturing Growth Manager will provide on-going support, and can help identify opportunities and create plans for growth and improvement. It also provides a comprehensive business diagnostic tool specifically designed for manufacturers – GROWTHmapper

Made Smarter West Midlands - has launched a £1.9 million digital adoption push to drive growth in West Midlands manufacturing and engineering SMEs and help them boost productivity. Digital experts will provide advice to manufacturing businesses on how to switch to advanced and automated technologies as well as working to improve employees’ overall digital skills.

Product and Service Development

Innovate UK EDGE - A mentoring support programme that can focus across the business or on specifics such as digital, leadership, workforce, sales or growth. This can be run as a 12 week or a 12-month programme and to be eligible a business must have been trading for at least a year with at least 3 FT employees. The website also hosts useful templates for managing and growing a business including technology strategy, inclusive workforce, streamlined sales process, online competitor analysis, and managing risk; as well as guides on subjects including boosting employee motivation without increasing salaries, keeping cashflow forecasts up to date, improving staff onboarding, and top tips for good management

Innovation Competitions - These offer grants of between £25,000 and £10 million, and innovation loans of between £100,000 and £1 million. (Innovation loans only for UK-based SMEs to carry out late-stage research and development projects)

High Growth Programme

This will provide intensive and tailored support for 50 of the West Midlands high growth SMEs to not only unlock barriers to growth but to manage growth in a sustainable way. Between July 2024 – March 2025, these 50 businesses will be provided with a dedicated Key Account Manager (KAM). KAMs will work with each company to agree a growth ambition and identify a current baseline position and key challenges.

Each company will get a tailored account plan that will detail activities, KPIs and interventions needed to achieve the desired growth target by the end of the programme.

For further information email business.development@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Our Business Growth Wolverhampton Team is a partner in Business Growth West Midlands (BGWM) who organise a programme of business support webinars and workshops - here are a couple coming up early in 2025.

Here you can find details of all BGWM Webinars and Workshops.

Skills for the Future: Upskilling and Reskilling the Workforce

• Date: Tuesday 14 January 2025
• Time: 10am - 11:30am
• Location: Online 

A course designed to equip you with the tools and knowledge necessary to foster a culture of continuous learning and prepare your team for future success. In this course, you will learn to understand future workforce trends, conduct skill gap analyses, implement effective upskilling and reskilling strategies, design impactful learning and development programs, manage change, and measure the success of your initiatives.

Register for this event

Expand Your Marketing Toolbox

• Date: Wednesday 15 January 2025
• Time: 2pm - 3:30pm
• Location: Online 

One of the greatest challenges in marketing is managing the campaign setup, organising a posting schedule, creating the content and understanding the results so your senior leaders (or just you) understand what’s happening. Perhaps you’re the one doing everything, from sales and marketing, to doing the work and the administration around it. In this webinar tailored for you will cover a range of tools that can be used to make your marketing more efficient, more effective and help you understand what’s working. 

Register for this event

Investment Readiness: Financial planning and forecasting

• Date: 29 - 30 January 2025
• Location: West Midlands House, Gipsy Lane, Willenhall, WV13 2HA 

This two-day event is designed to enable you to identify the best source of finance for your business’ needs and prepare for an application. Delivered by a team of experienced Business Finance Specialists, you will walk away prepared to begin your business finance journey.

Register for this event

It’s no secret that levels of R&D and innovation activity in the black country are lower than the wider region. And we know some of the reasons why including the simple fact that most of the regions innovation assets, including Universities and KTP, are based in and around Birmingham.

So earlier this year we sat down with various stakeholders to explore how we could change this, and in April we set ourselves a target to double the number of businesses formally engaged onto an Innovate UK Programme over the following 12 months. Since then we have worked closely with the Warwick Manufacturing Group, Aston Centre for Growth, Made Smarter and Innovate UK, bringing some of those Innovation assets into the City to make them more accessible – and guess what, we’ve now doubled the number of Wolverhampton businesses formally engaged with Innovate UK! And a big thanks to Eamonn O’Connor from Innovate UK, who has delivered a number of Workshops for us. Interested in starting your innovation journey? then please contact us at business.development@wolverhampton.gov.uk

So what is innovation

But what do we mean by innovation, how can a business be more innovative, what difference would an innovative mindset make, exactly what support and funding is available. Well to answer these questions and more, Innovate UK Business Growth are delivering a programme of Workshops and drop-in sessions in the City. Innovation comes in two forms - anything new to the market or anything to the business. So, innovation could see new products or services in the marketplace but equally it could be through processes and systems, which helps improve production, reduce costs, or drive efficiencies.

Our Innovation Workshops

The opening workshop in June led by Eamonn O’Connor one of Innovate UK’s Senior Innovation and Growth Specialists provided an introduction to and overview of Innovate UK.  Delegates were introduced to the Innovate UK mission, strategic priorities, and the various opportunities they offered to support innovation in businesses of all sizes. Content included their funding programs, how they collaborate with industry and academia, and the resources available to help business ideas reach their full potential.

The second workshop in July focused on finance available and developing a roadmap for the innovation journey. Eamonn O’Connor Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist, presented a series of steps and actions necessary to implement a strategy to drive innovation, as well an overview of the funding opportunities available.

At the third Workshop help in September there was a focus on how you can be innovative in the approach to branding, marketing and customer knowledge. Using their 30+ years of marketing experience Innovation UK Specialists, Howard Nead and Stephen Fisher guided delegates through the fundamentals of a best practice marketing approach to grow a businesses, including Understanding the sales funnel, Telling the business story, The 7 P’s of marketing, Brand management, Channels and routes to market and Marketing in the digital era.

At the fourth workshop held in November the focus was “Mindset for Entrepreneurs” where Eamonn O’Connor Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist shared a wealth of information, advice and great tips about how to keep motivated on your business journey and how to avoid entrepreneurial burnout. Eamonn was also able to share his own experience as an entrepreneur building and selling an engineering business whilst along the way facing a series of challenges to stay focused, motivated and maintaining a sense of well being.

Is innovation support right for me?

We appreciate some businesses do not see themselves as innovative, and/or would not consider themselves eligible for Innovate UK support. That may be the case for some, but you would be surprised at the range and types of business that have received support.  If you are wondering whether innovate UK Business Growth Support would be relevant to you why not take a look through some of their case studies here.

A helpful toolbox

Inspired by Taiichi Ohnos’ “5 Whys”, this free tool helps you to quickly get to the root causes of problems. By the end, you’ll have sorted between symptoms of the problem (which are often mistaken for the problem itself) and have a clearer picture of what you need to address! This tool is available for free as part of Steamhouse's growing Innovation Toolbox, full of handy interactive resources to help you innovate to solve problems! Also check out the Assumption Dump tool which you should always try before starting any project!

Follow this link for an insight into the full support from Innovate UK Business Growth.

• Issue 58 - 25 November, 2024
• Issue 57 - 18 November, 2024
• Issue 56 - 29 October, 2024
• Issue 55 - 7 October, 2024
• Issue 54 - 18 September, 2024
• Issue 53 - 6 September, 2024
• Issue 51 - 12 July, 2024
• Issue 50 - 27 June, 2024
• Issue 49 - 10 June, 2024
• Issue 48 - 17 May, 2024
• Issue 47 - 29 April, 2024
• Issue 46 - 11 April, 2024

Over the past 12 months we have worked with hundreds of local companies providing direct support, advice information and guidance. Here are some of those that we have supported through a capital grant on the UKSPF Grant Programme.

Start Up Business Wolverhampton

The Black Country Chamber of Commerce is now providing services for start up businesses on behalf of City of Wolverhampton Council as part of the local authority’s drive to build the city economy. With funding from the Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund the start-up programme, which will run until March 2025, they provide support enabling Wolverhampton residents to engage and access skills to create the foundations for their business to prepare, start and ensure its survival.

Further details can be found here: Start Up Business Wolverhampton - Black Country Chamber of Commerce

Under the Council’s ‘Our City Our Plan’ strategy, the Chamber of Commerce team will offer local start ups in the early stages of development a suite of activity to help them start up, scale up and thrive. To speak to the Chamber team about signing up for the programme, call 0330 024 0820 or email: wolverhampton.startup@blackcountrychamber.co.uk

Ignite Business Workspace and Start Up Centre

IGNITE (Innovate, Grow, Navigate, Ideas, Technology, Entrepreneurship) is a FREE to use business workspace and start-up centre to help encourage co-working. Located in ground floor units 3 and 4 of the i10 office and retail complex at the heart of Wolverhampton city centre’s transport Interchange, IGNITE provides entrepreneurs, business start-ups, established growing SMEs, students and graduates with FREE bookable workspaces, resources and business support. For more information see here.

GOV.UK

A wealth of business start-up advice and guidance is available via the Government website.

• Set up business
• Business - setting up 

For sector, trade and activity specific business plan examples please visit Bplans - Sample Business Plans. Here you will find over 500 examples, along with other useful start up information.
 
The Princes Trust is also a good source and has useful information on typical business plan templates.
 
If you are looking for loan support the British Business Bank website also has useful templates for managing the start-up phase of a business including in particular the managing the cashflow element which is key to any business start up.
 
There is also Enterprise Nation which has useful information.
Expert support for small businesses in the UK | Enterprise Nation
 
The banks are also a useful source of information with the following available for the High Street Banks:

• NatWest Business Builder
• NatWest - Running your business
• Barclays Make your start up a success
• TSB - Start your business
• Metro Bank - Start up stars

To help raise awareness of your business, build useful business contacts, and potential customers and suppliers it is probably beneficial to factor in time to attend networking events. Whilst some of these are chargeable many are free, and a good source for finding details of these is Eventbrite.

This allows you to identify all types of events by theme, location and date - and most of the business support workshops the City Council run are advertised there.
 
The Federation of Small Businesses and the Black Country Chamber also run networking and business support events, have a range of information on their websites, and whilst being membership organisations there is some information and events available to non members