Next week sees the end of the Growth Vouchers scheme but it seems few businesses have taken advantage of the Government scheme despite its widespread promotion.
According to the Guardian newspaper, this £30m scheme had only handed out £3.6m by early March 2015, over a year since its launch in 2014.
The growth vouchers scheme was billed as “a pioneering programme to help support 20,000 small businesses get the advice they need to achieve their growth potential”.
Run by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme offers small businesses (with less than 250 employees) the chance to apply for up to £2,000 that they can use towards getting professional advice on issues such as finance and marketing. SMEs then have to match that funding and pay for half the advice themselves.
The Growth Vouchers scheme comes to an end on 31 March. BIS has told the Guardian that 2,132 growth vouchers worth £3.6m have been claimed by small businesses. In addition, a BIS spokesperson said that businesses had received £1.2m worth of advice to help them identify the support they needed.
A progress report on the scheme published in February suggested that some firms had received the vouchers but were not redeeming them. Most of these firms said they couldn’t afford to pay for their share of the cost.
BIS told the Guardian: “There are still 5,694 vouchers in businesses’ possession worth £11m that are yet to be spent and we will continue to distribute vouchers through to the end of March when the programme officially closes.”
Despite the low take-up, the allocation of Growth Vouchers has been conducted on a “random” basis meaning that some firms have been turned away, regardless of their suitability for the scheme. The Guardian spoke to Richard White, who is opening a bar and restaurant in Exmouth; “I got a computer says ‘no’, basically,” he said.