smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

The government's Small Business Service is to be renamed the Enterprise Directorate to reflect a growing focus on ensuring the continued health of existing businesses as opposed to the creation of new ones.

Stephen Timms, newly-appointed minister for competitiveness, announced the changes, with the Enterprise Directorate set to fall within the control of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) and to be staffed by up to 50 people.

While Mr Timms insists that support for the creation for new business will still exist, the move reflects the government's intention to increase focus on encouraging stability and growth among existing business as part of a new action plan for the years 2008 to 2011.

'We have seen very good progress on start-ups over the past few years and we want to maintain that and build on it,' Mr Timms says in an interview with The Times. 'But I think it is time for a new focus on growing the size of these businesses. They need support, and more can be done to obtain the greatest benefit for the British economy from the growth in the number of small businesses we have seen in the past few years.'

Although recent statistics show that some three-quarters of small business owners have no plans to expand their business, Mr Timms added that the new support framework should help many small business owners to become more ambitious in their expectations for the growth of their firms.