As part of the government's learning and preparation for its long-term plan for SMEs, the Minister for Services, Small Businesses and Exports, Gareth Thomas MP, came to Buckinghamshire to engage directly with our small business owners and industry leaders. During this Business Roundtable event in March, the minister heard from local entrepreneurs, founders, and business leaders about the challenges and opportunities facing small enterprises in today’s economic climate, including access to finance, skills development, digital transformation, and regulatory reform.

Buckinghamshire Business First also fed back into the strategy using the intelligence gathered from numerous other meetings with businesses and Buckinghamshire MPs, as well as surveys capturing business sentiment and confidence. As 91% of Buckinghamshire’s businesses are micro businesses (<10 employees) – higher than all other enterprise regions in England – we are pleased to see the views and experiences of the Buckinghamshire business community, and the barriers they face to growth, addressed in this plan.

This input from the coalface is vital, because, as Gareth Thomas MP pointed out: "a 1% increase in SME productivity could generate £100 billion for the UK.”

Key policy announcements we believe most relevant for Buckinghamshire businesses, across the five key chapters of the strategy, include:

Opening Up Opportunities

• Launching the new Business Growth Service to simplify finding advice and support. This will be integrated with the locally-led service offered by Growth Hubs, like Buckinghamshire Business First, with the government planning to ‘…embed local partnership working as a core principle of the Business Growth Service.’
• Making SMEs a national priority for public sector and government contracts; the Ministry of Defence will form a new SME Defence Centre which will simplify access to defence for SMEs.
• Supporting small businesses to trade abroad and expanding UK Export Finance’s capacity by £20bn. Export support and advice will be integrated into the new Business Growth Service. 
• Supporting under-represented entrepreneurs, building on the success of initiatives like the Invest in Women Taskforce, and the Lilac Review that addresses the inequality faced by disabled founders.

Fixing the Fundamentals

• Tackling late payments with legislative reforms. This is an issue that costs the UK economy £11bn per year. You can contribute to a public consultation to influence these measures.  
• Bolstering the capacity of local authorities to speed up planning, providing funding for 300 new planning officers and accelerating digitalisation of services, streamlining planning rules for smaller sites, and fast-tracking high-quality developments on brownfield land. 
• Modernising the tax and customs system to make it easier to use and save time.
• Supporting firms to decarbonise, alongside lowering energy costs and increased training for retrofit jobs.
• Reducing regulatory admin costs by 25%, saving businesses time and money, such as simplifying corporate reporting requirements to take account of business size.

Unlocking Access to Finance

• Offering 69,000 Start-Up Loans that come with a business mentor. 
• Working with private lenders on the appropriate use of Personal Guarantees, including a mandatory Code of Conduct for loans issued under the Growth Guarantee Scheme, to ensure their use is fair and transparent.
• Longer-term commitment to the British Business Bank’s Growth Guarantee Scheme, helping more businesses access the finance they need to grow and invest.
• £3bn boost to British Business Bank to help lenders offer more small business loans, increasing its financial capacity to £25.6bn.
• £340m for regional equity investment, improving access to capital in every part of the country. 

Backing the Everyday Economy

• Transforming Business Rates, with permanently lower rates for Retail, Hospitality and Leisure properties with rateable values below £500,000 from April 2026, plus freezing the small business multiplier.
• Banning the use of Upwards Only Rent Review (UORR) clauses within new commercial leases to make leasing fairer and support business.
• Introducing the Safer Streets Mission and Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee so that neighbourhoods will have a named, contactable officer dealing with local issues, placing 13,000 additional police officers and PCSOs back on the beat. 
• Tackling persistent antisocial behaviour offenders, making it a specific criminal offence to assault shopworkers, and repealing the £200 threshold for shoplifting offences. 
• Partnering with businesses to co-design actions the government and industry can take to encourage theft prevention.
• Providing £2m funding for the National Business Crime Centre over the next three financial years to help tackle the crimes most affecting businesses today, tackling the sale of stolen goods. 
• Creating powers for local authorities to tackle vacant spaces and introducing a new Community ‘Right to Buy’ for valued local assets. 

Future-Proofing Business Skills

• Launching new Digital Adoption pilots and working in partnership with industry to drive SME tech skills, led by the needs of SMEs. 
• Expanding the Made Smarter Adoption programme for manufacturing SMEs, and launching a new tech adoption scheme for high-growth-potential professional and business services sector SMEs.
• Funding leadership and management training and creating a new Business Mentoring Council. 
• Backing the next generation of young entrepreneurs, including boosting access to enterprise education and launching a new ‘Youth Entrepreneur’ King’s Awards for Enterprise award. 
• £1.2bn more a year for skills, ensuring more of the skills needs of SMEs are met.

The full strategy is available to read on the government website.

Want more research and analysis on Buckinghamshire's economy?

Visit our dedicated Reports and Analysis webpages for the latest insights on the Buckinghamshire's economy and workforce, and the effect of policy decisions on our local business community.