The BBC’s Politics Show reports on a group of Welsh businessmen who have set their own not-for-profit business support service because they say the assembly government’s service is too bureaucratic:
Paul Ragan, who sold his south Wales-based insurance company last year in a multi-million pound deal, said the present business support environment was “stifling”.
“Over a number of years we’ve been frustrated at the lack of support, the bureaucracy and red tape,” he said.
“If you’re the man on the street, if you’re the lady running a business in Abercynon, where do you go, how do you get the help?
“Nobody really knows. It’s complicated, it’s too bureaucratic and if you do manage to find out where you go and how you access this help, be prepared to wait for two, three, four, five, nine months depending on the support you need. There is no guarantee you’ll get there either.”
Brian Morgan, who is the Professor of Entrepreneurship at UWIC, agrees. He said that the business support offered by the assembly government was “overly bureaucratic, top-down and lacking in real focus”.
“Whether you want a £50m property award or a £2,500 innovation grant you all have to fill in this ream of paperwork and at the end of the day most of the people in the Welsh Assembly Government, and there are a lot of people there in business support, simply seem to be form filling, paper chasing,” he said.
“We’ve had business connect, then we had business eye, then we had business gateway – all of these have come in, taken years to be introduced and now we’ve had this latest incarnation called Flexible Support for Business, which if you ask anyone out there I wouldn’t think many people have heard of it.”
Something else for Ieuan Wyn Jones to sort out in his dysfunctional department.
Related posts:
