 Good morning and welcome to the 31st meeting of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee for this year. The first item on the agenda, item 1, is a decision for the committee to take items 4 and 5 in private. Are we agreed? Yes. Thank you. Now, may I ask all those in the public gallery and present to switch any electrical devices off or to silent that might interfere with proceedings. Today we have our first evidence session on our business support inquiry, and I would like to welcome our witnesses who have come in today, from my left to right. First of all, Lynn Cadenhead, who is chair of Women's Enterprise Scotland, Matt Lancashire, director of policy and public affairs at SCDI, Susan Love, policy manager for the Federation of Small Businesses and Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chamber of Commerce. Welcome to all four of you. Thank you for coming in today to the committee. If I might just start before we move on to other committee members' questions with a fairly general question, which is, in the decade following the transfer of business gateway to local authorities, what are your views on the effectiveness of business support provision to SMEs at a local level, and specifically in terms of the provision provided, whether it is face-to-face or digital, specific support for rural businesses and coverage of advisers across Scotland? Who would like to come in on that question, first of all? If you want to, throughout today's proceedings, just to indicate by raising your hand, no need of course to come in, all of you, on every question, but to see how we progress as the session proceeds. Liz Cameron, thank you. Okay, let me try and just dissect your four questions, thank you. In terms of, I think that you're right, and I had the honour of cheering the transfer over from business gateway services from Scottish Enterprise to COSLA 10 years ago, and I'm quite aware of some of the challenges in the early days of that transfer in terms of lack of resources and lack of understanding of exactly what support services were around then. If I fast forward to today, if we didn't have business gateway model delivering what it's doing today, we'd have to look at reinventing it in some form and in some manner, because we have both Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise absolutely focusing on their particular geographical areas, but at a particular local level, business gateway is actually fulfilling that role in terms of business support services, albeit the model might not be right, and we can have a further discussion about that shortly, but it is fulfilling a gap in the market, albeit it's time that the committee has recognised time to revisit that model. In terms of the rural support in particular, I was in Murray last week and I was talking to both the chamber and the business gateway support service there. I think that we need to be, when you're revisiting a model, we need to consider what's happening with other local deals that are being done, because we've got to look at whether we can integrate or collaborate better the support services for particular start-up and growth businesses as well. I'm highlighting growth businesses because they're quite important to the local communities that they're serving. We should be taking a wider view in terms of the business support service, because we have a pretty strong ecosystem around business support services. One of the problems with that is that, from a business community's perspective, it is very difficult to get to the right type of service and to the right product to fit our growth businesses. What steps have been taken to work together with those from the point of view of business gateway support? I don't feel as if I'm competent to answer that question. I think that that's a question for business gateway and local authorities. That said, I would have assumed, but perhaps wrongly, that where there's a strategy and action plan for the city alliances and for the other rural areas, there is collaboration and development going on, as we speak, in terms of what type of business support service does a local community need, and it does vary from region to region. I'll come now to Matt Lancashire. I'd like to say probably that the brand of business gateway, since the transfer 10 years ago, is very strong and very well known across the business community and business sectors. I think that that's a starting point. It's a real positive in that sense. I think that there's been a divergence in performance across local authorities. It's a very mixed bag in terms of our members' thinking and evidence back to us on the support they receive. There's also, to an extent, we've not seen really any difference between local authorities who've kept the service in-house to those who've gone towards a more external provider model going forward, too. I think that some of the key issues I raise look at the service provision of SC and the agencies against business gateway, and also whether there's an isolated approach, i.e., is there an alignment between what the agencies are doing in certain areas and business gateway to provide the best support for a business moving forward? I think that alignment piece is pretty critical to any new model that comes forward and comes out. I also think that business gateway has been operating in a quite challenging fiscal period over the past 10 years for local authorities, which has, in sickness itself, had a wee bit of a burden on the service provision that it can actually provide and to what ends it can do, as well. I also think that coming from our members—and Liz has quite rightly touched on it—a lot of members are associated with the support for business gateway are early-stage businesses, so they're not established businesses. They're not people who've been on the block three, four, five years. There's a lesser demand for business gateway from members that are established and certainly an SCDI's membership. That support's needed, particularly if we look towards aligning with things like the SR review and we talk about scaler for businesses and the support that's needed to achieve that across Scotland. Maybe business gateway can play more of a direct role there. The last point on the digital side, and at Rural, again, goes back to that differentiation between what you might get in Dumfries and Galloway, where you may be very different to the provision that you get in Highlands and Islands, and that might be something to be high and support offered there, too. In terms of digital, I think that that is a weakness of business gateway, where a number of members suggest that business gateway doesn't offer tailored digital support service to enable their business to become digital or move on and push forward. That's a critical aspect of any new model, in that businesses are changing, fourth industrial revolution is upon us. What is business gateway going to do in terms of demand for support for digital services? Are there any other improvements to marketing and awareness of business gateway services that could be implemented? I touched on it a little bit, where I said that there's a real complex landscape of business support services, whether that might be Scottish Enterprise or business gateway. It's great that there's so many entry points, but at the same time, it doesn't seem like there's a one-stop shopper. There should be a no-wrong-door approach to business support, so whether you go in SC, you might get directed to business gateway. If you go in business gateway, your support might be over here. At the moment, that alignment doesn't seem to be coming through from what our members suggest. I'll give a general remark at this point, and I'm sure that we'll go into further detail about different aspects such as delivery and rural areas or digital support. The first thing to say is just recognising the history of some of the issues that we're talking about, and when we were thinking about preparing our submission for committee, we went back and had a look at previous inquiries into business support. Challenges around the complex nature and cluttered landscape of business support was one of the first inquiries undertaken by the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee back in 1999-2000, and from that came the recommendation that we need a one-stop shop for business support. As Liz Smith said, if we didn't have gateway, we would ultimately end up back at a place where we said that we need to have this one-stop shop. That's backed up by similar inquiries, for example, in Wales a few years ago where they set up business Wales, and there have been similar calls about the current support structure in England. It's important to recognise the value of that national advisory service irrespective of who is delivering it. The next thing is to think about the context over those 10 years on what's happened. I think that it was particularly unfortunate that local government took over transformation of business gateway exactly at the point at which recession hit. We all remember that at the point at which that transition was happening, there was quite a difficult time in terms of rethinking the products and advice and services that businesses needed, because the demand completely changed and businesses went from thinking about growth to retrenchment. That was an added context that we need to think about when we're talking about the transition. Has it improved? Has it got worse over the last 10 years? Hot off the press, we've just done some polling work with our members asking about business gateway, because the uptake of that varies in different surveys over the years. Our latest survey of just under 200 businesses showed that 64 per cent of our members had used business gateway services in the last two years. I'm sure that our membership is probably more engaged perhaps than the wider business population, but that's a tremendous awareness and engagement statistic for a business support service when we know that most businesses don't use business support. Of them, over three quarters found it a helpful service. It's worth bearing in mind that engagement and awareness have generally improved in all the surveys and quality of students done by gateway. There's a generally high satisfaction rate, so from that perspective it's a fairly solid service and a good principle that most of us would agree with. However, there are a number of aspects around how the service is delivered that we might want to reflect upon in terms of which types of business or business owner or sector or place we might support differently, how we might deliver that support, how we go about the monitoring and reporting and setting of targets, and how the service is run itself from a governance and accountability perspective. Lynn Cadenhead. Thank you. Women's Enterprise Scotland has been fortunate enough to be doing quite a lot of international work recently within Europe and also in terms of policy development for the G20. At the outset, I would like to say that we're incredibly fortunate in Scotland when I see the level of support that is already available for businesses as compared to other countries throughout Europe. We really are in a very fortunate position. However, as with all things, room for improvement. The business survey results that came out with the paper today were incredibly useful. However, I would like to highlight that there's no gender disaggregated data provided with this paper, so it's very difficult for me to comment on specific issues from that research for females. Broadly in line with everyone else who's spoken to date, generally the services of business gateway are deemed to be supportive, useful and helpful, but there's considerable level of inconsistency in terms of the type and style of support across different geographical regions. Also, there is a dependency. There's a bit of an issue if you're in one area, you might get one level of support and one area you might get a different type of support. I'd like also to share with you an example of a female who lived in one business gateway area, worked in another business gateway area and a part-time job and wanted to set up a business. However, she was not allowed to go to the area where she worked, which was more convenient for her to be able to get support in order to be able to set up her business. She couldn't go for business gateway support in the area that she actually lived in, because when she lived in that area she was looking after her child. Fundamentally, she was not able to get support in a manner that was consistent and appropriate to her needs from business gateway. As a result, the business has not gone anywhere and that's really unfortunate. I think that those are some of the issues that need to be teased out. It's inconsistency in levels of support. We have feedback from people who say that the support that they've had from a business gateway adviser has been absolutely fantastic to the other extreme where they would not recommend business gateway to anyone because they felt discriminated against and not supported. Fundamentally, that comes down to the quality of the business adviser individual. We are seeking to see some kind of accreditation or standards implemented across business gateway advisers. We'll come to Jackie Baillie. Thank you very much, convener. I'm hearing a positive endorsement for the principle of a one-stop shop, but, as Lynne started to tease out that there are clearly differences in geographical experience, some would describe that as a postcode lottery. Do you think that that's a fair description of what's going on in business gateway at the moment? Are there some areas that are better perceived to be better than others? I would say yes, and that's clearly indicated by a lot of the survey evidence that we all pick up. We are quite clear that if we are looking at it as a Scottish-based service, if we can actually look at, as Lynne indicated there, what is the quality standards, what is it that we are trying to achieve for Scotland for a moment and then what is the contribution that each of our local areas and communities can contribute to that economic growth because all areas are very, very different. That's one of the strengths of having a business gateway-type service, because it should be driven by local needs, by what local business community needs, what the local business opportunities could be. There are strengths in having the national focus, but that national focus must be clear where it is that we are trying to achieve. I think that we are all quite clear that the KPIs and the targets that are set are completely out-of-date. We are being driven and I picked this up in the work that we were doing through the enterprise and skills board as well. The targets that we are looking at, we are playing with numbers, and that's not quality. We've been measuring a lot of our economic performance on some of the wrong data, might I suggest, and therefore that drives human behaviour. If I'm getting paid on how many start-up businesses I'm responsible for doing in Lanarkshire, that's what I'll go for. We're driving it inadvertently, because we've got to put it some measurement, but we've inadvertently driven it in terms of numbers of start-ups, numbers of growth companies. That's where the national focus should be coming in and saying, economically, what are we wanting to achieve here? Is it more jobs? Is it a special type of job? All of that will vary from local area to local area. We're all saying that we need to revisit what it is that we're trying to achieve and revisit the KPIs, as we're calling them in the committee report. One suggestion that I know that we did put for our submission about is a measurement on partnership. I'm talking about true partnership between public and private sector, because we're going to be all facing a situation where we do all have reduced funding and that goes for private sector as well. Therefore, can we look very closely? If a measurement is on workshops, in the last year, business gateways held 25,000 workshops, that's a hell of a lot of workshops. If that's how we're measuring it, then they've done a good job. I think that at the time of measuring you can have impact for Scotland. That's not the right measurements. Therefore, that drives the behaviours and it drives, at a national level, inconsistency approach. I would also say that we should be considering and comparing the services that are being provided through local authorities who are running the contracts. Those who are not, in particular, the elevator programme, we're looking at new models now and I'm not certain whether that knowledge, expertise and learning from what's happening in Ireland, in particular, can take that knowledge and reshape business gateways at local level but still have that national focus so that we don't have the national lottery that I just happened to be in money and I don't get the same service that I'm getting in D&G. There's a real challenge around how we think about this issue of differences in local service around the business gateway service in particular. We want a national consistent advisory service. That's been broadly agreed. I know that we and other organisations over the years have also said that there needs to be an element of local flexibility in how the service is delivered. We saw that five or six years ago, when we were coming out of recession, that the priorities in a local economy might differ from the national priorities that the Scottish Government might set for the agencies. We need those who are delivering the service to be able to respond to support a particular business, sector or geography in a different way. There will always be some difference if you accept that there needs to be some local flexibility which we do. That said, most people have said that they feel like there's a degree of inconsistency here. I agree with that, but most of that is based on a feeling, it's feedback, it's anecdotal evidence from those that work with business gateways. From our perspective, it would be things like our FSB colleagues locally saying that they have a great relationship with business gateway X, where they're completely engaged and willing to work with us, similar to what Liz mentioned, but the gateway next door refuses to do any joint events with FSB. It's that kind of inconsistency. For us, there are elements of what make a good service that we have identified. The next issue is to what extent are the way that we design the service in terms of designing contracts, targets and monitoring, to what extent does that marry up with what we think makes a good service. Some of the issues that Liz mentioned in terms of your willingness to engage with key partners in the local economy, that isn't really something that would be incentivised at the moment. A good service will do that automatically without the need for incentivisation, but without that, you're not guaranteed of that. The ultimate problem in terms of comparing what's happening across the country is, certainly as far as I can tell, there isn't any data published about what's happening in individual gateways. In the past, when the stakeholder group was set up, we used to receive quarterly reports about performance by individual gateways, but even then, we were only given actual performance. We weren't given performance against targets, so it's pretty meaningless. As far as I can see, other than the responses from local authorities to this inquiry, I can't tell what's actually happening at individual local authority level. I don't know whether the performance is good or bad. I don't know whether the targets that have been set are ambitious or not ambitious. I can't tell if there's a problem. From that point of view, it's difficult to reach any kind of evaluation on the differentiation in services locally. I mean, I'm sure that we have that, but in the public domain, I'm not aware of it. I'll try and keep this very brief. I think that where I see the item members recognise that there's a kind of inevitable consequence of devolving responsibility to 28 local authorities with different local economic priorities and needs. However, we're saying that there's a value to doing that because you'd be able to tell your service to those local economic challenges and needs. Going back to the measurement, if we can tailor the economic measurements to the economy in a Dumfries and Galloway area in comparison to the central belt economies, which is very different and very different in terms of the targets that should be set and the ambitions for those areas as well in terms of the infrastructure for economic growth, I think that comes into it too. The targets need to... What I'm trying to say is that the service needs to be tailored locally but have the consistency across the service approach nationally as well. I think what can inevitably stop that is the funding packages for business gateway in local authority areas as well. We've had 10 years of local authority austerity to an extent. That's going to have an impact, not just on business gateway but other business support services in that region or area too. I think that that is a critical focus on that. You can only run a good service if you've got cash going into it that allows you to innovate, allows you to expand and allows you to make new service provision available too. I think that's a critical element to focus in on here. I think there was a survey saying that around about mid-80% of businesses that had gone through the business gateway service were happy and satisfied with the service that they have, which is fantastic and a really high result. I'd say go up 100% if you could. That's me and that's where I'd be at. Still, it's a fantastic result. I think that you need to break those figures down and look at what type of business it is. I'm getting fantastic services. The critical element to ensure that the Scottish economy grows is not just business startups, it's those scale-up of businesses that have got a real opportunity to export and trade. We have to put some focus to business gateway there to make a more sustainable economy. Other colleagues will be picking up some of the issues mentioned about data and targets, but we were very mindful of the comments that you've made about the lack of published data. Can I pick up on one of Matt's comments, which is about the money? Follow the money that I was always taught. There seem to be quite distinct variations between local authorities. Is that a problem, she says? I don't know who wants to go first with that one, Susan. We don't know, because I can't see data on... I can't see readily available data on how much is spent on the service, how much local authorities are due to spend on it, and how much is actually spent on it. OK. That and also whether it's being ring-fenced for this service. I know that we certainly advocated a while back that I believe it should be, but that, for whatever reason, that decision was taken not to ring-fence. I think that it's also wider than that in terms of what Susan just said there as well, and your question about funding and what the future model could look like, because I'm assuming this committee's going to make some key recommendations. I don't think that we should do it in isolation, because if we're looking at, you know, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, they're going through massive change as we speak, and I think that we need to understand what that change is, whether it's process change, whether it's culture change, it's a bit both my understanding is, and also I think revisiting what could the role of the business gateway organisations be, and therefore, if we're going to focus, we're going to focus on start-up there, but business gateway also focus on growth companies, so does Scottish Enterprise, so does Highlands and Islands Enterprise, so will the new south of Scotland Alliance Board, therefore that's duplication for business, because if I'm a growing company, do I go into the business gateway, and I don't like the word signposting, but do I go into the business gateway, will they then forward and direct me on to, whether it's Scottish Enterprise or so? Where will that go? I think that there needs to be a discussion to take place in terms of who is ideally going to be focused on that local delivery element, whether it's start-ups or growth, because we're seeing changes in movements, therefore, and in particular, business gateway was not part of the enterprise and skills review, which may have been a potential missed opportunity, but can I just reassure the committee that we certainly did discuss business gateway in some depth and in some detail, because we all believe that it should be. We cannot carry out a review and make recommendations for change without recognising the role of the business gateway structure and organisation. Therefore, if there's a pot of money not looking at what we've got now, it's what are we doing with the rest of the budget and should that be reproportioned? I don't know because, like Susan, I have no idea how much has been spent on business gateway in those areas. Can I just come back in? I think that it's really important at the outset that, although we are talking about support delivered locally and we're specifically talking about gateway, Liz is absolutely right. We cannot look at the business support landscape by just looking at gateway. We absolutely cannot, because the core view coming from everybody representing business, and three of us here sat on the Enterprise and Skills Review group, was that it has to be more focused on the user's experience. The users don't care about whether it's Scottish Enterprise or business gateway or skills development in Scotland. That doesn't matter. Ultimately, we need a vision where in time most of our support would be delivered online. There would still be someone to one support, but in time most of it would be delivered one-to-one and it wouldn't matter which agency or organisation was doing it. If I just pick up on one point that Liz made about this growth business issue and Matt had spoken about it as well, I mean I think if you look at statistics around start-ups in Scotland, our business birth rate is not great. Despite all of this, it's not where it should be. Scotland's going to be more reliant on more jobs coming from start-up businesses than existing businesses compared to elsewhere in the UK. So we can't take our eye off the ball in terms of start-ups because that's where our high-growth businesses will come from. I know that there has been an increase in the number of businesses over the past 10, 15 years and we can get a bit complacent about that, but I think that there's a real serious question to ask around. What do we want in terms of a start-up business rate and who is going to support it? Because gateways number of start-ups assisted has remained pretty much the same over the years. Despite a big increase in the number of businesses, that could just be because they've had the same amount of resources and so they couldn't possibly have helped any more businesses. For me, there's a question about if the number of businesses has increased substantially and the resources for gateways for start-ups haven't, to me there seems to be a mismatch there in what we want. The reason why gateways has focused on growth businesses is that they're right that there has been a focus on the need for more scale-ups because of the disproportionate impact that some businesses have. Part of the reason why business gateway has done that over the years is because for quite a long time it was our impression that Scottish Enterprise was not much interested in most local businesses and their aspiration to grow. Gateway filled that space by being interested in local economies and local businesses. We appreciated how important some businesses were to a local economy and were able to nurture them through to the pipeline. I think that there's a reason why gateway got into that space around helping existing businesses to grow. Longer term, we probably need to think about the journey and how we are ultimately going to deliver joined-up support to businesses. I'll keep this very brief because I know it's a supplementary question. I think that there is a complex landscape. I said that in my initial remarks where people can get support and services for different aspects of their business and where they want to improve or sustain and maintain their business. That's simple. The clue is in a time so it says business gateway. If you walk into a business gateway surely we should be able to have a single-point gateway that can triage you to the support whether it's from SE, the agencies, SDS, and if we're going to continuously improve the service that's moving forward because I think that's what it's about is maybe that's the key aspect that they can act as a gateway as such and whether they offer that support themselves or whether they pat it to SDS or whether they pat it to SE doesn't matter. It just matters that the business and the user, as Susan rightly said, gets that support. Maybe that's the improvement. Lynn's nodding ahead. It's really important that the absolute focus needs to be on the user. They don't care where the support comes from. It's the right person for the right job to give the user the right support. I'd also like to comment on start-ups. If we want more scale-ups we need more start-ups. It's quite a simple approach to understand. Where we do need more support is in terms of the missing middle. What happens when companies start-up? They might get support for a couple of years' time. If during that period of time they haven't accelerated to the extent to go on to high growth support they end up going into this missing middle and they get nothing. They really lost, they feel quite abandoned. There's considerable gains that can be made to be focusing in on really nurturing that because when you're an entrepreneur and you're starting up a business the really difficult time comes about two to three to four years. The initial excitement of starting the business has waned. You're deep into tough times and that's when they need additional specific support and particularly leadership support as well. Thank you. Andy Wightman. I want to explore a little bit the need for more consistency across the country in this. You've all mentioned that the local focus is important and I think it's always been there from the very beginning. The responsibility for quality assurance and marketing performance was transferred from Scourge Enterprise to Cosland in 2009 and I note from the information we've got that the Business Gateway National Unit although it's responsible for performance monitoring and target, etc. None of this reporting is in the public domain. None of the regional performance is in the public domain. What do you think are the key elements of securing more consistency so that there's a minimum level of expectation as to what Business Gateway could deliver regardless of where you are in Scotland? Silence. For example, do you think that the information on performance should be in the public domain? Susan Love. We've commented quite extensively that, despite quite a lot of criticism over the years, from our point of view of a national service there just isn't the amount of transparency around this service that we would want to see. So there isn't information routinely published about performance by individual areas against contract. There isn't information on why and how targets in certain areas are constructed the way that they are. It might be absolutely fine. We just don't know because we don't see that information. I do understand that the local authorities are concerned about unfair comparisons or uninformed comparisons, but I still feel that it would be better overall to publish more data. I think that in terms of securing more consistency in some sense the data that's gathered, albeit not all published is intended to provide that information about consistency in terms of the number and type of events and the qualifications of the advisers and the number of assists. So the contracts are supposed to be structured at the moment to deliver performance indicators to ensure a consistent level of service. I suppose for me there's a couple of questions. Are those delivering the right things that we want delivered consistently across the country? It feels like some of the evidence is more around this quality of the service angle. The numbers game where we are probably collecting data on, albeit not publishing, but the quality aspect less so and that might be things like how experienced are the advisers? So not just do they have a qualification but how experienced are they over and above having their qualification? How much do we engage with the local business community, other stakeholders, other agencies? Can we evidence that joint working and where we've attempted to do more? Is there innovation in how we deliver our business support locally? I don't know but it seems to me we're not asking in fairness we haven't asked for it so that kind of information would help us if we gathered that and published it we would have a better sense of whether that was consistent. But the other issue around how do we get the right data and information to ensure consistency is this issue that Liz picked up on and that's whether the current requirements around gathering data and reporting on it are driving behaviour that mitigates against quality so we all know that the need to have lots of criteria in the contract targets and performance we all know that that drives getting numbers through the door and I think that all the evidence from businesses through the Enterprise and Skills review was about the need for more tailored support, more time with businesses to talk through what they want to do similarly I would suspect a lot of the business advisers themselves will say this isn't necessarily the type of support that I want to be giving to a business but we have to get the numbers up this quarter so for me it's about are we asking the right things in terms of the contract and what we're asking for data on and measuring on it definitely needs more transparency in terms of what's published and we might need to think about and incentivise a delivery of them I echo what a lot of Susan's said targets can drive a perverse behaviour in terms of we've got to achieve this target get so many people through the door who don't get the support and offering that that they deserve and I'm not saying that happens but it can happen when you set stringent targets across a number of businesses sorry, a number of business gateways they have to be transparent that the data should be reported as part of the continuous improvement exercise it's as simple as that you've got to look at the data to look at where we can improve the service moving forward, that's what any business would do that's what anyone in a sense how do you know to move forward if you don't know what the data is actually telling you so I think that that's just logical there is a suggestion by RSNE members that they are frustrated by bureaucratic processes and inflexible products that sometimes business gateway can offer and if we don't have the data we can't readily see that going forward there is an opinion that it's rather than informed about the product they need there's an option to try and sell the product that they don't necessarily want and is that driven by a target mode approach I'm not too sure but that's some of the feedback that we've had back and where we need business gateway to go is catching on to Susan's point again is to offer that tailored support and speed of access which is critical for businesses to succeed now we start to measure targets in that respect we can offer the continuous improvement of the service which I don't think is there at this present moment in time because we can't see the data and where we need to improve going forward what needs to be said about the data has already been said there's another specific issue about terminologies that are used so for example business gateway might track women owned businesses so businesses that have been started up by female entrepreneurs other people might track women led businesses Scottish Enterprise in its account managed companies talks about statistics related to companies where the primary contact is a woman I don't know what that is the primary contact in the business could be the chief executive or it could be a personal assistance or it could be head of marketing so we need consistency of definitions of what is being tracked and measured across the enterprise support system one or two other issues that is in terms of the one place to hold the data if we acknowledge that there needs to be a revision of the data and what we are measuring and I know that there is work going on as we are speaking right now with revisiting that from all the public sector agencies and I also understand that there is discussions going on between the agencies and the business in terms of creating the one place in terms of the utilisation technology where businesses can actually just go into business gateway or whether it's any other agency it's that one place and it's the sharing of that data so that we're quite clear in terms of a business going into business gateway it doesn't have to complete five other documents and then get into Scottish Enterprise et al and create another five documents about their business so I know that there's work going on in terms of trying to bring that together but it's very early days so I'm just sharing that with you and I also understand that we do have data and it's regional data but like Susan and others on this table I've not seen it and be did I go to seek it and the answer's no to both those questions some of it's online but that's not good enough for the business community and for others that we're using public money on we need to be quite clear what we're spending that fund on in terms of where it's going and what impact we're making in terms of our economy in your evidence Liz Cameron you appear to be quite critical of the extent to which there was incoherent approach to how different business support services are accessed and the perception that business gateways the only place to go for some support could you elaborate a little bit on that and particularly in relationship to the support that's currently provided by the private sector what were we we conduct quite a detail research in terms of preparation for this with chambers and then with their membership and you know I quoted earlier in the beginning about 25,000 workshops taking place and you know my question is is that the best use of public sector support services because a lot of these workshops are actually available through the private sector so there's a level in our opinion of potential duplication of service and therefore that takes us into the partnership element that yes businesses, especially start-up businesses and those moving into the next level of their their growth but at times it may be that business gateway and others should actually pull back from providing some of that service and or work in partnership with the local private sector players because it's available, the services are there so why are we delivering it through business gateway is there good examples of that happening in some parts of the country of positive partnerships meaning yes for instance in Aberdeen they do a lot of the work through the elevator and in Tayside and also in Lanarkshire where you've actually got we talked about people making things happen you've actually got some chambers of commerce collocating with their local business gateway and that's actually creating very very strong partnerships that we can actually lever the public sector support and also the private sector and that's where I think that that could be a model for the development of the service moving forward and a few other examples because it is about local delivery and a few other examples where you've now got some pilots on local export partnerships where you have local authorities you have SDI you have chambers you have a lot of the organisations in that rendis table today all working together on local economic development plans that's particularly focusing on the business need for the area and also the expertise that's in that area and utilising and levering support in and I think that's you know it's there to be levered we should perhaps stop and take stock of what is the role of public sector business support services because there is a role there absolutely is a role there but let's look at how we can actually work and complement between public and private sector working together okay thank you I was just going to follow up on this point about access and so Matt mentioned earlier the role of business gateway being a gateway and I suppose we felt like this this is an aspect of what might have been envisaged for business gateway over the last 10 years that really hasn't hasn't been born out in practice most of that's not business gateway's fault but there hasn't been really a commitment to using business gateway as the access point for businesses seeking support and from our perspective there's two or three main reasons for this the first is that what businesses seek support on has really mushroomed what we want of businesses what we demand of businesses has really grown in the last 10 years so we place all kind of expectations on small firms now that we want in terms of becoming more innovative more productive exporting more being more resource efficient looking after the wellbeing of their workforce becoming more digital and cyber secure there's a whole range of things that we want businesses to do over and above just starting and growing a business there is a lot more support that's growing to service these needs of smaller businesses but unfortunately that has meant even more support to be curalled into our business support landscape service and we haven't necessarily always thought about how those other services would interact and work with business gateway so we're expecting gateway to just be able to be the gateway and the signposting to these services without always thinking through whether we've got the right processes to enable that and given the resources to gateway to do that the second issue is over and above gateway I just haven't seen a commitment from other parts of the public sector to support business gateway as a gateway I just haven't seen it at all most agencies have been primarily preoccupied with their own brands and programmes and selling themselves rather than thinking first about whether it would be better to deliver this service in collaboration with business gateway and that should be the best route for businesses to access our service and the Scottish Government also has not helped this by funding a lot of additional programmes and activity and websites and communications when it should have been standing up for business gateway first of all and saying first of all can we deliver this service through business gateway that should be the primary route before we think about developing other websites or marketing campaigns for initiatives John Mason Thanks convener I think I'm continuing some of the stuff that Jackie Baillie and Andy Wightman have been asking but I suppose listening to the answers I end up being a bit confused around this area of targets and performance because on the one hand Liz Cameron said and talked about playing with numbers and if I got you correctly that if we just focus on the numbers we're inevitably going to get inconsistency and yet if we don't have the numbers I just don't see how we measure all this and yesterday some of us were out in Lanarkshire and that was very interesting and I think they've got a contract with the two councils and that's got some quite specific figures they've got to do something like 1100 start-ups plus 500 growth companies and out of their start-ups they get 20% that become growth companies so that all seemed kind of clear and they had a bit of leeway from what understood but they also had specific targets on the other hand I mean Glasgow's in next and I'll be speaking to them but they, if I understand in their submission they've got a column called volume starts which went from 1001 in 2010 to 407 in 2017 and they seem to be saying that that's not a good way of measuring and in fact they say there are arguments for having an in-house service aligned with local economic needs but also subcontracted out where providers are targeted and will achieve greater numbers which strikes me as quite a bizarre thing to say that if it wasn't them doing it there'd be greater numbers elsewhere but these numbers wouldn't matter any of you give me any clarity Susan Love I suppose a theme in what we're saying around all of the data and the statistics available is it's not clear for people what the data that we currently gather is telling us and how that informs the decisions we make about what we ask gateway services to do and how much money we give them to do it I just don't see this clear rationale for what is it we want to achieve what are the statistics telling us and where would we target our resources So shouldn't we not be asking for data or should we be asking for different data? So a question that I have and I don't know the answer to this is specifically if you look at the Glasgow example so in the economic indicators report which Slade publishes every year which gives a sort of very broad overview of economic development in councils across the country one of the indicators used is the business gateway start-ups figure Now when you read through the most recent one when you look at the graph of the different local authorities and they give three years for this it jumps out at you that the Glasgow figure looks to have almost halved over the space of three years but we know that the number of businesses in Glasgow has increased dramatically in recent years more than anywhere else so for me the question arising from that data is what's this telling us has the council made a conscious decision to put less resource into start-ups because they think that there's many more start-ups happening anyway in Glasgow and therefore the resource might be better spent in other areas of the business gateway service or elsewhere or are they not doing a good job? Is there a reason why the number of start-ups has dramatically reduced? I guess what I'm saying is we're producing data but I don't understand what it's telling us what it might mean around where Glasgow goes next so my question is well what's Glasgow doing this year? I'll pass on your question with my question to Glasgow in the next session but I suppose that I end up being more confused now because that could actually argue that we need more inconsistency because the situation in Glasgow is so different from somewhere else that we're just going to do completely different things and yet if we are trying to do something nationally as this committee is we're actually trying to get consistency we're trying to get the same figures can I bring in Matt Lancashire at this point? The earliest statement you made around keeping it in-house or going externals seems a bit like quantity and quality kind of approach and actually it's both that we desire so we want a quality service that delivers to a lot of businesses so if there's elements and this goes back to why the statistics and data needs to be published so if there's a reason why private providers are driving increased numbers through the door then in comparison to local providers there's a reason for that and we need to know what that is through the data and through conversations with them to understand that at the same time if there is a thought which has come out in some of the evidence that we've all said today we're not always private providers but also local authority providers of business gateway 2 a poor service or a poorer type of service happening or a lack of quality we need to understand that too and at the same time if there are best practice things happening in business gateways and external providers we need to understand that so I think this is a quality quantity discussion Are you saying we can live with both quality? Well we want businesses access in business gateway absolutely no doubt the service they offer is positive we've all said that and we want a high level number of businesses doing so but we want to ensure the quality of what's being offered increases and continuously improves and news with the time towards that digital approach so not necessarily that we can live with the both but finding the best in what each are doing and bringing those together to redevelop the service and we as Government or whatever trying to improve things it is based on the numbers it is based on the quantity and we do that in the health service we do that elsewhere it's harder to measure the quality I agree and that's why I think going back to Liz's earlier point there needs to be a measurement around that quality of support so how do you fix a KPI that says this is a quality support service which is difficult to do and there are certainly other Government contracts it just doesn't focus on the numbers it focus on that quality support if you look at employability and skills contracts in particular they don't just focus on the number of people going through the door they also focus on the quality of service that individual is getting we can apply the same principle to a business gateway as well yesterday when we went to Lanarkshire one of the interesting comments was that as they got more women advisers in their team they were getting more women coming to them seeking advice and the suggestion seemed to be that some women found it easier to discuss their business with other women in this area of targets should we be setting specific targets and should performance be measured around how many businesses are led by women how many start-ups by women how many growth by women would you be arguing for that side of things absolutely because you can see from the information that's available already we've got a 50-50 balance of females males businesses coming into business gateway that drops down to about 22% of businesses as they move through the growth pipeline and then actually when you go on to Scottish Enterprise Account managed services the number of businesses that are led by females is 3.4% so the data we need more information around this data to be able to continually prove this and see where the issues are in terms of people dropping off you've got some really great examples of female focused support programmes for example the initiative that's run by Edinburgh business gateway is absolutely tremendous you can see that coming through in terms of the results of female led businesses that they are setting up in Edinburgh is better than many other areas the female specific support is very very important for females at the start of the journey there's also information there's research that shows a person if they get bad advice when they come along to an advisor not necessarily just a business gateway but if on their first visit they get bad advice it can actually put the person off starting a business for up to 10 years which is really quite incredible so this is why the quality of the first inter the very first intervention of anyone starting up a business is really important and females approach their businesses setting up their businesses quite differently they need gender specific support to help them on that process so that might suggest that you feel somebody nationally maybe us or the government should be telling business gateway much more specifically you must do that in the next to try and get better consistency to try and make sure there's enough women coming through the system is that the kind of argument you would put? yes please I would advocate for a national head a national head of women in business for business gateway I think that's really important to have somebody leading that setting that policy throughout and then feeding that out regionally I just think that following your female discussion there there's actually you're right in terms of we operate a mentoring programme and I've been doing so for a number of years now currently 42% of the businesses that are being mentored are female and we do we do give them the option do they wish a female mentor or a male mentor I've got to see some prefer females for a variety of reasons so I think that just be cautious in terms of what we're trying to slot people into so that's available we've also got a specific women's mentoring programme and over the last 12 months we've put 250 women through that as well as have other organisations because we've also got the Government's women's action plan group and there's over 17 17 organisations representing women from funding, investment support on that group and we're all currently looking at should we actually look at Professor Sarah Carter was looking at should we operate and look at a national advisory unit looking at gender specific business support so there's work already just starting and perhaps that is a recommendation that you want to look at in terms of what we're doing in that space and in terms of gender specific business leaders and business owners and Lynn is absolutely right in terms of that growth pipeline but it's also quite clear that people say women don't have X, Y and Z and I've also heard it said that we're not risk averse either it's not that we're not risk averse we're debt averse in some cases therefore a lot of females who do start-up business they're actually under resource from day one that should be looked at in terms of that business support advisory service so there's wider implications than just focusing just on the gender I'm conscious of time it's obviously limited here but also that this is a point that I think could be developed further and I wonder if our witnesses might think about writing in on that specific point to the committee just to follow up on any points that we don't have the time to deal with here because I think the committee would be interested in hearing further on these issues there's a couple of brief follow-ups which may be indeed on these points first of all from Dean Lockhart and then Gordon MacDonald thank you convener and thanks to the panel for coming in today I've got a couple of questions so I'll ask them at the same time and the panel can respond as they see fit the first is on funding according to latest figures the total amount invested by business gateway last year was 12.6 million across Scotland given that the entire enterprise budget is around 500 million does the panel think that that's the right balance between investing in startups compared to elsewhere and my second question is following up on the topic of digital support and the importance of helping startups and other companies develop an e-commerce platform given the complexities and the specialist skills required in that area is it realistic to expect business gateway to provide those services or she would be looking for another body to provide specialist services in e-commerce I'll try and keep it brief first of all is that the right money to spend on startups I don't know without a more detailed evaluation around what it is we want gateway to do so there needs to be a decision about whether we are happy with the current number of startup assists that we ask gateway to do or whether we think that that should be more because there are more businesses and more startups or less because there are more players in that market and online advice I genuinely don't know and we would need to evaluate that and look at the money we spend on business support in the round second question about digital startups so one of the points we've made of the last few years is that we're investing a lot of money in digital infrastructure but all of the evidence available would suggest that we don't have the digital skills in businesses so most businesses will say that digital skills are really important to their business but only two fifths feel like they have staff with the skills available to deliver that so we know that the digital boost programme has been delivered through business gateway which seems to evaluate fairly well as far as I'm aware I suppose that I would just comment that we've been quite slow to think about the opportunities by different business sectors the UK is the biggest e-commerce user in the world as far as I'm aware and yet we haven't really identified that as an area of business growth to support recognising the specific skills that that sector needs I agree with Susan, we can't really specifically say if 12.6 million is appropriate out of 500 million without knowing more information very quickly on the digital support tailored digital support for people is really important particularly obviously for rural areas need to think about all the different activities that are involved in that but it's also important for everyone to realise that being an entrepreneur is incredibly challenging and rewarding but it can also be a very lonely journey at particular points in time and that face-to-face interaction from networks of people in your local and further areas is really important so it can't be one thing or the other it needs to be a blend of both supports I'll be brief, I agree with all the comments on the first question but I would actually emphasise that we're talking about business gateways we're talking about start-ups my understanding of business gateways varying across the country is that they have workshops they deal with growth companies and they're now venturing into international support so that's where this misconception is coming in about it started up for business start-ups it has grown and developed into those areas whether that's the right decision or not I think that's for others to review and that would then depend on so how much is that worth and what's the impact it's had your second question on digital support that we need to revisit dramatically the whole digital strategy for Scotland because it's not good enough and it's not fully understood we're talking about digital skills half of us don't even know what we're talking about because it's at different levels and also the skill base and e-commerce and in fact Scotland is actually way behind in the use of e-commerce in terms of trading internationally and given our geography international connectivity e-commerce should in fact be focused a lot more than what we're doing right now and we're talking about training we also need further investment in the infrastructure because there's some parts of Scotland that we can send them on digital boost courses to whenever if they do not have the infrastructure we're wasting more time Gordon MacDonald it's just a follow-up to John Mason's questions to Susan Love you said that Glasgow may have been using funding elsewhere you couldn't tell why there had been a reduction in the graph and earlier on you mentioned the fact that Scottish Government was supporting business with funding streams elsewhere I'm just wondering if you've got a view on whether there should be a reintroduction of ring ffencing in councils bearing mind the majority of business gateways have been taken in-house absolutely, this is a national service if there's a certain amount of money that's given to local authorities to deliver the service, sure we think it should be ring ffenced but I don't know if it's not all being it may well all be being spent on gateways I just don't know there's another question and that is how much of the additional economic development services how much of that if any is actually contributing to the business gateway services and it flows from one budget to the other and I don't know the answer to that question either just one thing that we've not gone into today and we're happy to follow on it I do think it's worth bearing in mind all of the additional work that economic development departments do to support businesses over and above business gateway so we know that again from the slide indicators about 15,000 businesses are helped by business gateway by council economic development departments and that could be through property it could be through employability advice it could be through procurement support provision of premises and other finance advice there's a whole range of other things that councils are delivering I suppose the question for us is around if you look not just at the funding going into gateway but the wider economic development departments and consider the real squeeze on those departments where we know that in some areas we might have a really tiny economic development department having to do all of that and deliver the business gateway contract and I think that's an element that should be explored when we're thinking about these issues of inconsistency Colin Beattie Thank you, convener I think that I can take from what the panel's been saying that there are concerns about the measurements that are being put out there What about the monitoring and evaluation? Who's actually doing that? There's various ways that the service is delivered across Scotland that's not consistent How is that monitored and evaluated? Who does that? Are you asking are you asking us? I'm asking a general question Who monitors it and obviously the follow-up will be is it adequate? I think that it's probably a different levels of local monitoring and evaluation I'm assuming that that's done if I'm a local authority I'm assuming that if I've got a department out there contracted to do X, Y and Z that if I'm head of economic development I want to know what its economic impact is making to my area I don't know whether that's done in an ideal world that's what should be done but I actually think that there should be for seeing all of this at a national level we should have national evaluation being done across all of the support services here because we used to have a group of partners but then as it evolved that group became no longer there needs to be a level of monitoring and evaluation done but an independent level of monitoring and evaluation now that's coming from Scottish Government then it should be Scottish Government and indeed I would recommend that the customers are actually part of that evaluation and that monitoring Just leading on from what you're saying there that brings into question the governance of business gateway is it appropriate the present governance should it be done through COSLA you're saying the Scottish Government should be more involved does that mean that you're saying that what's happening now is inadequate I think it's less transparent than what it could be and on that basis if you've got any of the day it causes a representative body of the local authorities and they've obviously got a monitoring and a reporting relationship there but is that truly independent and is it as transparent as what it could be and perhaps not Yeah, it's a tough question and it's a good question too COSLA plays a role in monitoring that service and that's a positive because it enables us to get decent feedback in terms of again how the service is progressing and where it could progress further I think a more interesting point though is how we envelope what's come out the enterprise and skills review around alignment and interagency collaboration and how we weave that into business gateway and then monitor the success of the service going forward and whether it's COSLA and others together monitor that service going forward and I'm unsure of because essentially if you're going to improve business gateway the SR review said that we need an interagency collaboration we need that to happen and at the moment it's just COSLA monitoring business gateway moving forward how you're going to get that interagency collaboration I'm not entirely too sure so maybe there's a role for other agencies to support that activity too to ensure that we have alignment across the service provisions of our agencies and business gateway and COSLA and local authorities to ensure that tailored support or the right support for businesses going forward probably not answered the question but I think in the future I'm trying to say there needs to be perhaps other agencies involved in that monitoring service is what you're saying that business gateway has become somewhat isolated by being backed into the council it's isolated in terms of its ability to align and engage with other service provision that's available in Scotland and in a way if we could achieve that we would create greater value for the businesses that go through it and with that comes greater productivity and greater economic growth so on evaluation there obviously is monitoring data that's collected by COSLA which is I don't have any issues with that it seems to be fairly consistent in terms of the data that's gathered by the company contracted to do it there's a fair degree of consistency in terms of the satisfaction and delivery rates that that suggests as we've mentioned earlier there isn't however a lot of external publishing against targets for me around governance is the involvement and input of stakeholders and partners to the development of contracts so we've been involved in the past but more laterally I don't know who's involved from an external point of view in terms of what should the targets and focus for the gateway contract in this area be no idea, we've certainly not been asked to contribute to it so that concerns me around the opportunity for others to have some input on the service and the targets and the priorities and how it's evaluated who you are accountable to in terms of governance specifically so we've made quite a lot of comment around involvement of stakeholders and users of this national service which we just don't think is remotely good enough at the moment but one of the ultimate questions that's come up consistently around delivery of business gateway service is this is a national service that the Scottish Government funds if we do believe that there's an issue with consistency if we do believe that we're not getting the service in an area that we think we should be getting who do I go to about that who do I speak to in COSLA what are they going to do what's the Scottish Government going to do is the local authority going to do something like that the sanctions for failure to meet contract are completely unclear to me and for me that's an issue around the sort of accountability structure that we've got around gateway at the moment and lastly the point that Matt made is absolutely fundamental here in terms of the really critical services that local government delivers around business growth and support getting integrated into this broader view of how we want to improve support for the economy now because of the sensitivities around bringing local government into this that has made it difficult for local government to always be considered alongside the agencies and as Liz mentioned at the start that's been a stumbling block throughout the enterprise and skills review and still to a certain extent is a stumbling block from our perspective if you can't find a way to overcome the issues of local governance being brought into this national approach in terms of for example the work the analytical unit is doing that's been set up by strategic aborde we are never going to have a service that we want for businesses so we have to find a way to get both local and national leaders to share this commitment to work together to provide a service for business very quickly I'm interested in a qualitative assessment of the advisers and the advice that they gave because again we see discrepancies one person will get one set of advice one will get another setting of standards that advisers need to adhere to annual reviews all advisers to be trained in gender aware business support and obviously the opportunity for the user the customer to freely give 360 degree feedback to the business advisor because sometimes we hear stories of users not being satisfied with the advice that they've been given but they are reluctant to tell anyone that they're not satisfied with the advice that they've been given in case they get no further support so there needs to be an independent way for both sides to give free and frank feedback thank you and we'll now move to Angela Constance I'm very conscious that time is pressing and I had wanted to ask all the panel to consider the approach to mainstream inequalities could be improved as well as making it more sustainable but that's perhaps something that can be followed up in correspondence convener but I do want to specifically ask the FSB and Women's Enterprise Scotland a few things Ms Loven, your written evidence you spoke about how more consideration needs to be given to how the current business support landscape actually reaches those underrepresented groups whether that's women whether that's people from a black and minority ethnic community those from areas of deprivation I would also add in people with disabilities I wonder if you say a bit more about that as well as your suggestion that there are different products and support services required for women and that we shouldn't just be churning out the same old same old and just targeting services that perhaps are gender aware but I also wondered whether more thought needed to be given also around other underrepresented groups as well something we highlighted is that whilst I'm sure that there are some areas where this is a priority you don't generally hear this spoken about in terms of what we ask Business Gateway to do and back to this point about what are the priorities I suppose we are just reflecting upon if we want an inclusive growth strategy that might mean that we need different priorities rather than just any volume start-up or any business pipeline business we might want to look at whether actually that's not driving the type of inclusive economy we want to do is focus on more businesses in this particular geographic bit of our patch where we know that there isn't enough economic activity we know that there aren't enough businesses being started something that used to be spoken about about 15 years ago a lot more in terms of more action to encourage entrepreneurship amongst those in less affluent areas you don't really hear it spoken about that much now despite the fact that we know that if you've got less assets you're less likely to start a business now that doesn't seem right to me if we want to encourage more business start-ups and that would seem to me to be something that we would want to think about similarly I think as far as we're aware someone will correct me if I'm wrong we think there's only one gateway in the country that's got an adviser specifically looking at black minority ethnic community entrepreneurs and again that might be wrong so but that might be something that we want to focus more on as well now we sort of come from a position that in the past that we might want to just mainstream all of this advice and every business adviser should be able and informed enough to deliver this advice to any type of business owner that walks through the door and I suppose our view has changed in as much as we perhaps need to segment what we do a bit better if we want to target these groups so as Lynn was talking about earlier and Liz mentioned it too we know that women start businesses at a different age with different experience in different sectors and they're less capitalised and so that might mean that our standard start-up advice and product will not work as effectively for that group of business owners so I think we're coming into this period now of starting to think about we need different products and advice if we want to prioritise these different groups who are currently underrepresented amongst our business owners OK, before I ask Ms Cadenhead to add to that I just wanted to confirm some factual information that Women's Enterprise Scotland provided in your evidence you said that if women started businesses at the same rate as men this would boost their economy by £7.6 billion is that GVA is that per annum and is that based on the work of Sarah Carter Yes I also wonder if Ms Cadenhead would say more about why women are less likely than men to get the support for their ideas and perhaps how we overcome the bias against lifestyle businesses but specifically how would a national policy-driven approach for women-led policies actually help and what would that look like There's no one specific reason for why women start-up businesses at a different rate in men but fundamentally it comes down to what we've talked about before is their approach to risk we've heard that women may be considered debt averse but they're not risk averse they actually have advanced risk awareness and this translates into prudence in terms of their projections which can sometimes be seen as by people who are assessing their proposals as lack of ambition it's not lack of ambition, it's actually prudence and this prudence is good for the sustainability of the business but it takes them longer to be able to get there females start their business they're not just undercapitalised they start their business with one third of the capital that males do yet on a light for like basis if they had the same amount of capital they would be performing just as well as male led businesses we have to understand that women have multiple roles in society always have done always will so they need so that translates into different levels of time that they can actually dedicate to their businesses as well so lots of different lots of reasons to consider there in terms of how we can take this forward was indicating we are advocating very strongly for the establishment of a national women's business centre set up in Scotland with strategic funding over a number of years this is based on the successful American and Canadian models which give highly tailored support to females that are starting up in their business which is specific for their needs and time at that particular point in their journey we are recognising that females are on a journey sometimes they want female specific support sometimes they won't but it's a journey and we give them that support at the different points in time so advocating for a national women's business centre which seeks to enhance and complement the standard services that are offered by business gateway but giving the tailored support for women and again that comes back to us equally advocating for a national head of women in business for business gateway to set that national policy and work together and again working together with all the other organisations it's about collaboration rather than people seeking to protect their personal fiefdoms okay and can I just check the Scottish framework and action plan for women in enterprise 2017 I would like to know who has signed up to that and whether or not there are any feet draggers in terms of who has signed up to it the members around the table who's supporting the framework and who's dragging their feet we're trying to so the chamber's involved FSB's involved Scottish Enterprise's involved business gateways' involved there's a number of different partners around the table we have the framework meetings that happen once a quarter we do have an action plan we've got specific messages that we're doing so we are getting there but you will usually find that it comes down to select few that actually drive the actions forward I just wondered whether there was anybody missing anybody that you wanted to name and shame that should be part of this agenda who are dragging their feet I don't think there's anyone missing I think the issue you're going to find particularly from a sort of a business gateway support back to this issue around you might find differing levels of commitment towards this as a priority so some areas we know have fantastic leaders in economic development who are doing great work to encourage more women to start up businesses other areas that might be considered less of a priority or again it might be that there just isn't the capacity in that area to do any additional activity and that might be why they're doing less on it okay coming back to the 7.6 billion additional economic contribution that women would make if they started up businesses the same rate as men if you look at that figure that's actually higher than some of the other sectors that we are pouring so much money into in terms of life sciences technologies enabling technologies food and drink women as a cross cutting priority sector is really important to the growth of our economy okay thank you thank you very much we've slightly overrun our time here we don't want the next panel of witnesses to think of the committee as feet dragging so thank you very much for coming in and I'll suspend the session for changeover of witnesses welcome back to our business support inquiry and we have fresh panel of witnesses and perhaps if I could introduce them from right to left this time my right to left that is Stevenson who is the business group chair of SLAED Graham Smith from Glasgow City Council Dr Siobhan Jordan who is the director of interface Pamela Reid director of Ecosgen and Jan Faulkner head of economic development Dumfries and Galloway council so if I might start with the question which I think I'd like to direct to the two council witnesses and Jan Faulkner before we move on to questions from other committee members do you have comments to make on the effectiveness of business support provisioned SMEs at a local level since the business gateway was transferred to local authorities Jan Faulkner so I should say to our witnesses that there's no need to press any buttons the sound desk will operate systems and if you want to come into the discussion at any point please just indicate with your hand to me don't feel you need to answer every question we'll see how matters develop but first of all Jan Faulkner thank you I've had the pleasure I've been working in three different local authorities where business gateway has been introduced my career has been since 2000 and sits initially with Aberdeen city council Dunfries and Galloway councils what I can say and this is my observation business gateway has grown business gateway just doesn't work by itself it works in collaboration with others I think that's the hall mark of it it has gone through different different ways of delivery so in Aberdeen city and Shire it's delivered by contract by a third party but intersects really well with the chamber and also with the other agencies that are there similarly in Orkney where it's co-located with Highlands and Islands Enterprise but is a key part of the council and the council's operations and Dunfries and Galloway it's just recently been co-located with the economic development team which has supports each other and business gateway is a real key part of it it's co-located now with Scottish Enterprise what we're trying to do with the small amount of government public sector funding is to be able to eik out the most that you can so the council ensures in Dunfries and Galloway that it's a whole suite of assets are available for the service to be delivered and not only that third sector partners helps with that delivery it's useful we also ensure that we can use the talents of our people that is really important but we can also bring in talented companies through contract that is a challenge because we all have to use the public procurement process your effective for these councils you mentioned or the business gateway are effective in doing that what I'm trying to explain that it is effective but it's been growing through collaboration right, thank you very much in Graham Smith yeah, I think since the transfer of the business gateway service it's been highly effective in Glasgow what it's allowed us to do in the city is integrate it more widely within an economic context to provide an overarching service that concentrates on a deeper more meaningful engagement yes we provide the baseline service as we've heard from the panel in terms of the number of workshops and the advisory service but by concentrating and integrating it within economic development that's really allowed us to focus our our service in ensuring that businesses get the support that they need that it's integrated to the wraparound service provided by the wider enterprise agencies as well as our local council funding so an answer to your question yes that has been effective thank you and perhaps before we then move on to other witnesses I'll just give Pamela Stevenson an opportunity to respond to my question others may come in touch on it when they answer further questions from committee members Pamela Stevenson thank you, yeah Slade for those I'm hopeful everyone will be aware Slade is the professional network body for the 32 local authorities to deliver best practice and sustainable economic development and delivery of business gateway services across the local authorities and including our 18 lead areas that also includes the 57 local offices that we deliver so from that perspective we have seen some fundamental changes and challenges over the years but just like Graham said one of the key opportunities that's had for us and evident for us from local authorities and across Scotland is the allowance to ensure that we can integrate into our wider national services and our wider local authority services I'm ex-Scottish Enterprise from many years ago to see it now in both camps of the challenges you had working from one national agency to then working at a local agency it actually does clearly show that it requires us to have that local element of flexibility but allows us to have that integration with our planning departments or rates departments or environmental departments and really truly is starting to show some encouragement across the piece I'll turn to Jackie Baillie now I want to explore with you what some might call postcode lottery others would call a geographical difference whichever you call it could you maybe comment on the differences that there are between business gateway models both in terms of delivery but also in terms of finance I don't know who wants to go first Hi, so yes obviously there is 32 local authorities 18 lead business gateway and 57 local officers it is down to geographics we don't like to use that terminology I don't think it's very encouraging of postcode lottery I think it's down to a national consistent what was a core element that we were given 10 years ago but now it's very much about how do we flex that to suit the local priorities and local needs of our demographics it is very difficult to look at the difference between city centric and rural we do have to work hard to share best practice and to sweat our assets to ensure that we can leverage in private sector working collaborative approaches with our national stakeholders at regional levels that hasn't necessarily always been great in the past but I do feel that we are on a new journey over the last couple of years particularly with working with Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Government on the enterprise skills review to look at how we can improve collaboration with the national priorities coming out of Scottish Government are being delivered at regional level Pamela Reid Just to reiterate and add to what Pamela said the rural dimension I work as a research consultant and so I'm not directly involved in the delivery of business gate we are at our local economic development but that regional element particularly when you look at service delivery across all sorts of services in rural and isolated areas like in the Highlands and Islands is something that really needs to be looked into and linked to that we recently evaluated business support to social enterprise organisations and I know that's not necessarily what you're looking at directly today but a lot of social enterprise organisations do try to tap into business gateway that can prove challenging for both service delivery and for the social enterprises and that is part of the kind of rural picture if you like so if you take again the Highlands and Islands social enterprise models are particularly prevalent there and can sometimes find that they don't have access to the sort of business support in a delivery model that suits them Thank you convener Just to follow up on the point and perhaps a little bit of background on how interface fits in with business gateway our remit from interface is to support businesses across Scotland to match their business requirements into the world leading research within universities and colleges for research and development so we are a national support organisation that are outreaching businesses that perhaps need to translate their requirements into research and development or opportunities that universities can actually support to lend to development of new products processes or services so a direct link between our world leading research within universities into economic output through businesses so we are a small team but we are regionally based so there is an opportunity for us to collaborate at a very local level with the business gateway advisers and so I suppose our target market for businesses are those that are on a growth trajectory be they start up or be they more mature businesses so I suppose from our point of view in looking across the last particularly three years we can look to how many referrals we get from business gateway teams at a local level and that gives us a good snapshot of what's happening across the country across the national picture if we look at the number of businesses we have supported over the last three years 14% of those come through referrals from business gateway and I would say that many of those referrals are due to personal connections that we have established between my team which is quite small about 11 people based across the size of Scotland to some of those local offices so we know that it is personal connections that are making those differences in identifying the businesses that can really gain from support in working with our leading universities and so I think what we see is very much we have an opportunity to identify where there's really good practice and that's working with Pamelawn colleagues and then to look at how we can mainstream that across all areas to ensure that there's consistency I think it's not just for that specialist support organisations that are throughout Scotland that we can make sure that, as Jan has said, we have a collaborative approach to getting it right for businesses Okay, Jan Faulkner Yes, I suppose there is a challenge with funding but that challenge brings opportunity and that collaboration is part of it it's also looking at how we can lever other funds too to bring good value for our clients our client base is why we're there and that's what we want to help we want to help our clients through that business stream because you know what, the biggest beneficiary of successful businesses are actually our community and our constituents so it's well worth us to do that and what we try to do with what we've got is to be able to sweat our own assets to give more but the most fundamental part of the business gateway is that one-to-one advice this is where our clients bloom and it's where our advisors who are really well trained and very well experienced actually can give added value and that's where we can be able to work out what their needs are and to refer them to others and what is good is to ensure that that referral comes back and we get feedback and we do do that referral management system, the CRM which is used not just by business gateway but other business gateways and also our partners in SE and HI so a person a person's business actually has the potential to have quite a great value chain right across the customer journey I wonder because I'm not hearing necessarily clarity about whether the variation which I think people acknowledge exists is a good thing or a bad thing I'm hearing stuff about personal contacts and I'm starting to hear a bit about finance so Graham, you get to bring it all together you're in Glasgow there's less money that's self-evident what difference is that making what impact is that having on your delivery of business gateway and it is the case that other areas are going up some are going down I think it's that tension between having a national brand and a localised service and what we're doing in Glasgow so if you look at the workshop programme that's open to anybody so we've had last year think 440 individuals from outwith the Glasgow city area attend workshop so we are trying to be more inclusive more widely to do away with that postcode lottery we're working very closely with our partners across the wider city region city deal is driving that if we use the taunting accelerator for example we have Lanarkshire businesses that are based in taunting who are receiving support from business gateway interface and other stakeholders that we've tried to bring together so the point is very well made there is tensions between the localised service and having a national offer that's communicated out to the wider business community and I understand the frustrations that that can often bring the same service across different areas so the fact that you've had to cut business advisers by a third that has had an impact on your business it's changed with any cut or challenge we have to be innovative and we have to look at how we deploy our resources most effectively and by that we look across the wider business support network in the city Glasgow for example you've got jobs in business Glasgow providing advice and guidance to local businesses local startups lifestyle businesses you've got a cultural enterprise office who engage extensively with entrepreneurs operating in the creative sector you've entrepreneurial spark we have three universities that offer business support in some way she performed two spin outs there is a huge amount of support in the city which I appreciate isn't the same in other areas so for Glasgow in terms of the resource we have to manage the most effective way of growing our economy in 2016 we set quite an ambitious target to be the most productive city economy in the UK by 2023 for us to achieve that and for the city to prosper we need to look at the way service offers is it the best way to utilise our resources in having engagement with lifestyle businesses that perhaps aren't going to generate the GVA in productivity not saying that they're not important to local communities there are other players in the city that are offering that service thank you Andy Wightman thanks the term postcode lottery has been used I don't like that term at all I agree with Pamela there implies there's no accountability in any of this so I don't complain that I'm not getting the same service as I get in France but there are elements of this programme that have already been hinted at our national have national profiles with the branding business gateway the previous panel talked about that word gateway as well and I think when this was initially produced over 10 years ago there wasn't the idea that this would be a gateway of such that has grown are there elements of this service that you do think should be more consistently identified and delivered so that across the country businesses can be quite clear that this is definitely what you get from business gateway and everything else will be down to local variation and what's deemed appropriate for different economies so very good question because it is an on-going challenge and it is an area of opportunity for us we are trying to work very closely with our national agencies and specifically with Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Government as part of the enterprise review and hopefully the strategic board how do we ensure that we have a single portal or a one door approach that is broken at a national level that people can get entry into at a local level it is a big challenge for us and the continual clutter that continues to happen on a daily basis on the last week's Scottish Government launched three new finance initiatives not one of them were referred through business gateway we have challenges on our hands if national activity continues to be launched without consultation to local authorities and our gateway services we will continue to have these challenges we are up for all these discussions we want to have a service that declutters, demystifies and makes it easier for businesses to do business at a local level but to do that we also have to be at the table and be respected as a local authority agencies across Scotland we deliver support potentially or perceived to 365,000 businesses in Scotland that's 99% of the business base we simply don't have the resources the backup or the finance to do that but what we can do collectively working at a collaborative level nationally with partners and at a regional level is provide a more joined up referral and sign posting as well as having our own services to offer we've been working from a local authority perspective as part of our gateway services leveraging up to probably around 14 million of ERDF current programme for SME particularly activity this has been fundamental to us several years, we've been able to put in gap activity where we've had a bit of a gap between our business base services and access to our services through Scottish Enterprise who we work very actively with but there was and has been a gap but to allow us to have the specialist support services and HR employability and e-commerce advisers perhaps not consistently across Scotland but where it was needed and where we found that there was evidence for demand and that's been a fantastic progress for us how we then start to integrate that with our national agendas is also very important so yes we do need to look at these opportunities moving forward Could I just follow up on the question of Enterprise and Skills review because you weren't formally part of that what I mean how much success have you had in terms of making sure that business gateway is properly recognised within the kind of business support ecosystem and what are the implications of not having been formally part of that and why do you think you were not part of that well I suppose it's the everlasting question we do often say you know why our local authorities never consulted at a Scottish Government or national perspective when we're asked to deliver 90% of the marketplace it's a question we ask ourselves daily we do try and strive to work nationally and have a one voice that's why we know we designed in terms of the Enterprise review yes it was very disappointing from a slave perspective I can't talk for individual local authorities per se but yeah we were slightly disappointed but we have I suppose in a finally term we've gatecrashed ourselves so yes we are at the table in many ways through either our gateway national unit or through our slave representatives from our executive across our different thematic groups including business group so we're very now well embedded with Enterprise review for our international trade activity working alongside Scottish Enterprise, STI and Scottish chambers we've now rolled out pilots in Fife and Tayside to deliver trades regional partnerships with all the partners and they're already proving very well and looking to deliver very much joined up support that is now hopefully linking into where we can start to have discussions with the strategic board and some of them will be starting next week so yeah it's a long way to go we just keep pushing our corner to say look we are here we're here to work at collaborative level you need to understand what's needed at a local level you need to understand our local priorities but we are here to support and we're definitely here to collaborate and work with our national partners just to follow up on your point I think it's an interesting one just reflecting back ten years ago on the actual conception and the word of gateway to be I suppose that one stop shop support for business and it's interesting when we look at one of the aspirations of the enterprise and skills review it is to develop this main online entry portal that will be in place in 2019 and I think it's useful to reflect on how will business gateway how will all of us as business support organisations actually intersect with that online portal so I think we feel a little bit it's an ever changing landscape and we have to as national services take into account the business that may be based urban, it may be based ruraly, how do we best support those businesses, layer on top of that is it a female business is it a social enterprise so it is a very complex environment but I think what we have to be all key for is what is the best what's the customer centric approach that we can get a real strong business I suppose and support the growth aspirations of all of our businesses that may mean that we have to make tough decisions we may have to look at is there a basic level of service that can be delivered online and you know everybody is used to buying flights online they kind of step change that may be involved may be that people while they might like face to face support there may be aspects that we have to say in Scotland this is best delivered by a different type of service to then segment to what are the businesses that need that more personalised support a huge step change in economic growth and these are decisions that it's not just for business gateway I think these have to be a team Scotland decisions because all of us who are touching businesses need to actually be part of that mix business gateway is as we know works collaboratively with many different other organisations so to just focus on one of those organisations be it enterprise agencies be it business gateway etc I'm not sure that's maximising the value of the collective economic or public person Scotland Pamela Steele Just an example to bear on from what Siobhan said it's quite a good opportun moment to make reference to some of these things because I do remember it from the previous panel we in terms of how we make efficiencies as our own organisations as we go out talking to businesses how to do it we have to do the same thing to know how to become a bit more robust a bit more agile a bit more fluid we are connected to delivering our services so working with our business gateway national unit and with our economic teams across Scotland we are fundamentally having to look at how do we deliver and engage with the variety of cohorts of clients that we are asked to engage with particularly how do we work with young people they no longer want to attend workshops and talk to us oldies so to speak they want everything at the end of this phone so how do we deliver our services that's 24-7 able to be agile for businesses and young people and entrepreneurs to get access to this so we are currently working across Scotland with a new web app that was designed originally by our colleagues in Lanarkshire Enterprise Services we're rolling it out in one or two areas across Scotland which is now a new app to engage entrepreneurial start-ups for young people 24-7 it's already proving to be such a success that we're seeing so many applications coming through out with our normal 905 services so how do we then do that for existing businesses and others and how do we look at having offices and enterprise hubs at local areas that allow us to do that so digital connectivity and how we deliver services is very much a way forward particularly around the mass scale of workshops that we deliver, how do we make efficiencies there more sound bites, video, YouTube etc so there is opportunities to look at these areas I didn't have a read-all to do briefly comment on that yeah very short comment you were asking about business gateway and the national offer what is the offer and that sort of gateway element I think also what we can't lose sight of is it's a cluttered landscape for businesses in terms of what is an offer but also in terms of a business at different stages in the growth pipeline where is it, what does business gateway provide to them some people don't see business gateway as being relevant to particular businesses at particular stages but that's how it can off to be perceived and that middle growth pipeline, those middle businesses can sometimes fall through the net between business gateway and then Scottish Enterprise and account management and I think we need to really think quite clearly about that a follow-up from Jamie Halcro Johnston convenient, we're just on that point we've talked quite a lot in this committee about when we've had evidence on the missing middle and I just wondered we've talked here today about the importance of that local impact where should that missing middle be covered by should it be covered in a local aspect through business gateway and that kind of local importance or should it be nationally or a mixture of the two are you looking at me? I'm looking at anybody who's happy to give an answer I suppose some of the questions are asking very much about national perspective it is a difficult one what local authorities and collectively strategic level we've been delivering over the last several years is trying to implement and leveraging European funding to deliver that gap in the middle and successfully so but how do we do it moving forward when the landscape is continually changing and there's new ways of working, new products coming out changes being asked of our national agencies and I think it is a mixture but it's about a collaborative mixture and that's the bit we need to get right so I think there's a need for our local authorities through our business gateway services to not necessarily be the ones delivering the specialist services we are not just assigned positions we do have specialist advisers and a mass of really dedicated skilled advisers there's always room for improvement I'm fully aware of that but we have to deliver now I believe our role is about capacity building how do we work at a local level to ensure that the businesses we work with have fundamental business models and access to finance and the right skills to allow them to be more innovative to internationally trade at least to trade at a UK a Scottish and UK level which currently many of them don't so there's a mixture between how do we have that enterprise journey in a seamless process that allows the collaborative time so that the businesses don't know who they're getting the steps from per se but that the agencies are all working in a seamless transition and conversion of economic impact so it's not an easy one to answer but I think there's a mixture there but there's a bit of work still to do On a practical level what is happening at the moment what conversations are happening how is that working being done to make sure that that seamless journey is being done I suppose let's take internationalisation as an example in the past I would probably suggest being advised over the years that internationalisation is led by STI absolutely grey and not disagreeing with that at all however our businesses at the right stage in their journey to be signposted directly to STI no I don't believe they are so what do we have a role to do from an economic business gateway perspective so our behaviours and cultures have to change we have to ensure that we do work more effectively with these businesses to ensure that they are fit for purpose and they are at the right stage to be more specialist from other agencies to support that journey further I mean I have to share a very practical example with you in how we've worked with business gateway to support an innovative company and for us with having staff for business gateway having staff based in 57 local offices there are eyes and ears on the ground to essentially spot companies that can really I suppose are on a journey of innovation some of them may be very mature businesses there may be family owned businesses there may be a startup stage so on a practical example one of the companies that was referred to us by business gateway was a fruit and veg wholesaler from Fife that particular company wouldn't be touched by enterprise agencies it's a fruit and veg wholesaler but actually the lead company managing director had a fantastic idea that based on food legislation there needed to be a development of new practices and how to stop starch going down waste drains so essentially from potato peelings because he services fish and chip shops there was a real problem with food and drink legislation that was emerging now the business gateway advisor was keen to help that company but knew that they hadn't got the knowledge or the skill sets to be able to understand how to address his idea so we were able to come and work alongside the business gateway to identify relevant expertise within University of Aberty that's now led to a new company being formed called PeelTech and it's actually taken on the resource from Aberty University to head up the new business and that's now looking at international export so it's a real success story of how co-working can really bring an idea in somebody's head really to life and drive growth in the economic area but equally well we have companies that perhaps approach us first that we can then refer back into business gateway or to other organisations within the sport landscape to actually get assistance to the point, I think it is about the network of advisors that are touching businesses, it is so important that that network of advisors understand each other's missions because other than that we kind of get perhaps competition happening among one another but all of us need to have a very clear mission and be very well skilled to understand how to deliver that particular mission and then that interconnectivity can happen but I don't doubt that for a business it can be a very complex landscape so it's how do we as the business support organisations ensure that we are all joined up Thank you, welcome back to John Mason Thanks so much If I or we as the committee want to compare what is happening in business gateway around the country I suppose the first question is that actually possible if I want to compare Dumfries and Galloway and what business gateway is doing there and Glasgow and Fife and yesterday where Lanarkshire can I make that comparison and how can I make that comparison I think it's very difficult to do that I think it's very difficult to compare comparatively so the economic landscape Dumfries and Galloway is very different from what it is in Glasgow I don't think there's any question around that we heard from the previous panel about the issue around metrics and the difference between targets and measurable output and I think we really need to if there's something that we can take forward and really work on is the way in which we measure our output align it potentially with national data in terms of what the ONS produce because there is tension between start-up figures or core business figures and the wider economic impact that that has so it is very difficult to compare and contrast I can stick with Glasgow for a minute and I'll go back to other people in your submission you say historical data shows that business gateway performance in the city has no direct correlation to economic growth that's quite a major statement and almost might suggest we could have growth without business gateway we have talked about volume start which I take it is the number of businesses starting up has fallen from a thousand of one to four hundred and seven and other people have highlighted that can you give us any kind of explanation of that and how is that different from other local authorities I'd be delighted to I mean you heard from the previous panel around the issues of engagement and the level of engagement the tension between churning through numbers and figures for statistics versus the depth and quality of engagement in what businesses actually need and Glasgow what we've done is invested quite heavily in the skills of our business advisers to ensure that they're equipped to deal more deeply with businesses across the range of issues that they face whether it be internationalisation whether it be people, whether it be operations, finance so that we have that core baseline knowledge to be able to work more closely and by doing that that takes up more time by the very nature of that job so that was a conscious decision that we took to do that I guess the point that we were making through that is that business gateway engagement while that has dropped significantly it hasn't had an impact on the city performance and that's because business gateway has been brought in and integrated within the wider economic landscape within the city so going back to your question about the comparison between Dumfries and Galloway I think that's the tension between a local service and having that national brand that is the standard service what we're doing at a local level is trying to integrate that to have a more robust economic impact integration but how can you then measure what is business gateway in Glasgow doing have you got, do you set your own targets what do you measure, what are the out turns what are the outputs we measure it based on gva jobs productivity that's the measures that we use yes we align it with and we work with the national unit in terms of setting targets against a uniform of metrics is there improvements to be made there I think there are is it accurately reflecting the performance in Glasgow Dumfries and Galloway I don't think it does going back to the earlier point about lifestyle businesses and businesses that perhaps don't generate economic growth if we direct our business gateway resource to that we're not aligning it with the wider economic strategy so yes by the very nature it would increase those figures in terms of the number of businesses engaged with the other factor here is on that period between 2010 and 2017 business gateway came into the council prior to that it was subcontracted out and I'll refer back to the previous panel where there was debate around the performance of subcontracted business gateway services and the targets in the way in which targets are achieved through financial incentives by removing that we've allowed ourselves to focus more closely on what businesses actually need concentrating on the skills and experience of our business advisers and integrating that more fully across a wider economic landscape OK, welcome. Last panel I told them I was confused I think this time I'm feeling a little frustrated that is there no measure we can use to somehow see how the different business gateways are doing and maybe the start-ups is the wrong measurement but is it GVA and is that too vague Ms Faulkner? I've been looking at this on a local level going into ward level and if I just looked at the numbers and the targets that we have I don't think that would be smart what we try to do is take the context of the businesses in that particular area and then bump it up higher for the region so we've only recently and I'm from recent Galloway started doing this because prior it was just a report on the region's success rather than looking at particular areas for ourselves it's been a learning curve because essentially, well more than a learning curve it's been a sharing curve because we've known what's been happening in particular areas and the types of businesses some of them we won't have start-ups because we've got growing businesses who want to grow and if we do get start-ups they may come in just for a small amount of time but they may decide to be lifestyle businesses or decide I quite like doing what I want to do and I don't want to grow I want to be a business and earn a living, thank you and leave us, that is fine we have other areas near bigger innovations where we've got very ambitious businesses maybe a few but they are ambitious so it's contextual so I don't think you can just look at a number nationally and say we've got 9,000 new businesses what we need to know is are these businesses what are the ones that are going to grow and how they're going to grow so I think we need to mine below the numbers I totally get the contextual point I do it, I've got a lot of sympathy with what you're saying but then I just wonder if we take ourselves and airshires how do you know are they doing something better than you are you doing something better than them because if everything is contextualised we can't make any comparisons can we I think that if I look at at a local level I can make a comparison I can see which areas do well because I know that I've got rural areas where they're generating value-added products and I can explain that and I can explain that in GVA I have others that are doing other products I believe that we need to understand the context behind it to see that there are some things that we will not do because there are others that do it better than us and that is the biggest challenge I also think we're challenged with our targets I'm not one for following targets I know those targets are there but I want to see outcomes I want to see businesses that do well and if that means higher productivity and we have to measure using GVA well we'll have to do that because I think that would be a fairer way of having a good baseline and showing success Okay, thanks, thanks, Ms Reid I think you can I'm a research and consultant this is what we do, we evaluate the impact of various programmes I do think you can I would be looking at doing looking at the quantitative data but undeniably you need to look at the regional context the local context you need to look at a whole range of other factors like the different models that are being used in the different areas what I would say is that you absolutely have to go to the businesses that are supported because the key thing here is are the businesses in the areas getting the support that they need within their context and you would build that up into a national picture I would imagine you'd be of course you want to look at how each area is performing actually the best use of doing this work would be to learn the lessons from across the different areas the different models the different ways that business gateway is operating so I would be less inclined to present it as a comparison and more as a kind of evaluation to inform the future development across business gateway locally, regionally and nationally but I think in answer to your question it can be done in my view Ms Davidson From a national slave perspective probably just to articulate we do have a fairly robust performance framework in place for economic development across Scotland and for our business gateway performance we do have a comparable benchmarking set of families across our local authorities in terms of data we collect data from award level to a local level to a regional level and a national level all of this information from gateway specifically does go into our dashboards that's then evidenced and set within the context and provided table to our business gateway boards it's also put in our yearly slayed economic indicators achievements and performance review which gets launched and campaigned at the end of November every year which goes to ministers, civil servants and stakeholders alike all that in the public domain absolutely is and that goes out every year and has been for the last several years and ministers actually come along to our slayed conference which will be end of November early December to make reference to the key achievements delivered through our gateway performance which also showcases local activity national activity and our wider important wider economic development activity Colin Beattie The previous panel and I think you probably heard a fair bit of what they were talking about were not particularly excited with the quality of the information coming out about business gateway locally what sort of targets and how the targets are monitored, measured and evaluated I'd be interested to hear your views on that do we have adequate monitoring do we have adequate evaluation of business gateway in the present format so yes we do very structured monitoring process and play through our dashboards but why did the previous panel think something different and if you let me finish I'll probably explain to you I'm very frustrated with the responses but I'm also very frustrated that we're obviously not getting the message out effectively so yes business gateway board and our slave activity we obviously are not working still collectively with the national agencies and our key stakeholders to understand what we are achieving and how we actually monitor and deliver our services because there is stats to say this so we need to actually probably review how we're delivering our communication strategy at a national level more effectively to ensure that the likes of the members around this room understand what we do and then actually so we're happy to take that back and look at opportunities to work more effectively with our national stakeholders to make that happen in terms of a model where business gateway is being taken in-house by the council who actually is the person or persons that say right you know they've met their targets they're responsible for monitoring they're responsible for that evaluation where is the buck stop I take it to committee and it's agreed by council I have to front up every quarter to area committee to explain what's happening and why it's happening if things aren't going well then we're challenged to get it sorted we're given suggestions as well as professionals we usually turn up with an action plan which you would do but in the main it's through our council governance which I believe really works and this is why I'm very supportive that it is CODSLA that does oversee this because it means that you have all the council leaders there who see the results who are able to know their backgrounds because they've been well reported from their local economic development services through the directorates and they will own it because they will know what's happening from a ward level right through to a regional level but given the nature of local government and the nature of councils there is a limited skill in business how do you tap in to get that entrepreneurial skill so that the evaluation has got a quality to it many well my staff and myself and there are many members within our council who are business people I will also say we have business people represented by local members I do believe that we are very fortunate because we do work in a collective and we can get other advice we work with the SE I don't come from a public sector background I actually come from a business background in New Zealand and so I would say that if you're working in economic development and you don't have an entrepreneurial spirit you shouldn't be in it but I certainly am and I know that my colleagues are I'm glad that my MBA didn't really hold merit moving into the public sector but having worked over 15 years in higher education research data is something that within Glasgow certainly is something that we look at very closely we monitor we, similar to colleagues in Dovres and Galloway report that through the appropriate committee structures and through the convener for economic growth which is the leader of the council so that reporting mechanism within the council is very robust and we're accountable to them I suppose at a wider level for Businessgate we report into the national unit national unit have a role in terms of collating and analysing the data at a national level as we've already discussed this morning the challenge of that across areas and definitely something that can be improved on its panel I'll add it to looking at the governance side the previous panel seemed to agree that there was by backing Businessgate way into the local government that they had become somewhat isolated from for example groups like Scottish Enterprise how do you think that how would you say about that I can speak from a Glasgow perspective we work very closely with colleagues in Scottish Enterprise I mentioned earlier we have the city region city deal project the business accelerator at Tontine SE I have a presence here as does interface the chamber of commerce and we've created and worked very hard with colleagues in Scottish Enterprise to develop those links as there are more that we can do absolutely we're moving very strongly in a regional direction we're working much more closely on a regional basis and that's something that we'll continue to do but in terms of Scottish Enterprise we have a very good relationship and work very closely with them and I'm sure Pamela will add to that again it's a complex ecosystem out there and it becomes quite challenging for us because we are integrated with a lot of our national agencies however we work extremely close and as proactively as we possibly can with our SE colleagues SDI, SMAS colleagues our Scottish manufacturing it's important, it's vital that we get access to these national services to ensure that our local businesses get to build their capacity Scottish manufacturing are so effectively working with the local authorities and our gateway advisors because it's all part of the rationale diversifying some of our sectors for looking at our sectors around innovation and streamlining for competitiveness particularly around industry 4.0 so it's fundamental we work with them SE, we work very closely with their workforce development teams now called Workplace Innovation and obviously with their innovation and their internationalisation teams and particularly with some of their teams around leadership as well so there's lots going on it's just, I think the challenge is just how we get all that noted out there there's so many things and we've got evidence that shows that across 32 local authorities 18 lead areas there's some fantastic whether it's centric or at rural level fantastic projects happening in collaboration with a variety of national agencies it's just trying to get that national message out then perhaps it's something we do need to take a bit more time on and I'm supposed to try and link these two questions together there's an interesting dimension where we are trying to work more collaboratively to actually I suppose get the right specialist advice to the company at the right place and time but equally well all of us that have got indicators to respond to from our funders and we have funding from Scottish funding council SE and HI all of us also equally well have to show our individual contribution be it in the number of products and processing services but if you ask a business success as many masters so they won't be able to distinguish perhaps if I go back to the Ivan Wood and Son's case study there will Ivan credit business gateway with referring into interface will he credit Abertau University will he credit SDI who's given him a global platform so I think that whole you know how do we look at the additionality of each individual service versus actually the business see it as a continuum of a journey and I think again that's a key question that we can't we have to work together collaboratively to make the best use of our assets that we have but equally well how we actually measure that becomes quite problematic given we're all working off individual KPIs and all have to maximise and show the best for our GBA Thank you Gordon MacDonald Thank you very much, Can Vada I've just quite had a look at the Slade indicator framework report and the last one I can see there is for 2015-16 is that the most up-to-date report that's online? 17-18 comes out in about two weeks Right, okay and that will be sent to all Scottish Government Right One thing I was going to ask just having quickly looked at the figures there is a chart of the number of business gateway support interventions and it seems to suggest that over a third of local authorities have intervened in less than 100 cases would that be right? I'm not sure if I could accurately agree to that or confirm that As I said I've only just came across it just now I do have some stats I'm happy to take you through and that might be able to correlate with a stat that I don't recognise that you've been given so in 17-18 obviously 53,000 people plan to start their new business or issues of running and growing their businesses we've had over 31,000 people who've asked for support 10,000 over 10,000 people attend their workshops to improve their business skills of which 9,000 businesses I'm sure you're already aware have started support 47% of that of course is female start-ups over 17,000 inquiries coming through our businesses and over 15,000 business owners attended workshops we've also supported over 3,000 growth clients in 17-18 and again we're working with many clients under the new Scottish Government's digital boost so the number 100's assist to me doesn't resonate with our figures doesn't even resonate with my own 5s geographics so obviously we need to have a more proper look at it but since you mentioned it let's pull that out I'm happy to take it as an action sir okay if all of this information is available why are we hearing that there is a lack of transparency and also that there is no published data in order to identify what business gateway is spending their money on in its impact so not to talk out of turn of the witnesses from the previous panel but I think I may like to add my two peneth I think some of the concerns have been perhaps frustration from a national perspective we have very robust information that goes through COSLA to our leaders we have that same information at a local regional level go to our local areas and we have the same information that goes in through our Slade performance indicators which is currently being reviewed to improve that whole productivity capability rather than just about targets to deliver back in the transition days of 2008-9 when Scottish Enterprise transferred over business gateway support we had and I was involved in some of the national activity at the time we had what was called a business gateway stakeholder group that group has no longer met for several years and I think that group consisted of the likes of Scottish Enterprise FSB the chambers etc and I think they like that platform to give them some consultation and input into their interpretation and wishes of how they would like to see business gateway delivered however as business gateway has been more delivered in house by the local authorities that probably hasn't been the same opportunity to do that again it's back to happy to look at these things what can we do at a national level to work in consultation but I don't really think it's about just all these national agencies dictating and coming to tell us what we have to do with local authority and business gateway so when do we get to come to the table and discuss from a national perspective or SE or FSBs or Scottish chambers and where we feel that there's opportunities to work more effectively together so I think it's an area we need to probably have a look at again and refresh and get a bit closer to FSB in the chambers cos there is some fantastic things happening across the local areas but perhaps at that national policy governance level with some of those representatives there needs to be a bit more consultation Just on that last point that you mentioned about there has to be more consultation across the agencies and the fact that the previous arrangements no longer exist how do you currently share best practice you mentioned earlier on about Lanarkshire having a really good app that was now being rolled out how do you share best practice that happens across all the business gateways that previously existed and no longer exists so that was an external stakeholder forum we have a fantastic and have done since we transferred in 2008 a business gateway operational network you may have heard the acronym and be gone that delivers our core contract of activity and has done all these 10 years and it's a superb set of team working to deliver best practice to discuss the contracts over the years to look at opportunities to improve to look at benchmarking and particularly help each other with how we've had the challenges and opportunities where we've changed the contracts we've decided to review elements of the market that was missing in the middle so back four or five years ago we then delivered this new business-based activity around the growth advisory services but also how we support each other helping to look at changing the contract structures from outhouse to in-house commercial and it's been beneficial so we have a fantastic group of representatives across the local authorities economic development teams that come together to support just that core part of business gateway and then it's around working with Slade business group some of the same representatives are on that group to then see how we look to integrate the gateway operations across our wider economic development services and in terms of the Slade indicators that are there what are the key indicators we should be looking at if business gateway provides value for money so I suppose we do have the main core gateway targets the jury is probably out in terms of we are looking to review these but from our wider Slade perspective how challenging are those targets? I suppose how long is the piece of string it's a difficult one we can deliver the targets it's not about delivering the targets for us it's about the quality behind the targets I think we're all fully aware and we've raised this at the business gateway Scotland board recently that we have to review the performance targets for business gateway we don't think they're probably right for the current environment it's not just about how many clients we can get into the different levels of segmentation that can access SC services it's about the actual delivery of productivity innovation trade behind it inclusivity and particularly access to finance and I think Liz referenced it in the previous panel what we're also looking to do as part of our KPIs is we have to benchmark and we have to review better how we are showcasing the level of support that business gateway is doing to signpost to other referral agencies so I think that's important that we do understand the level of engagement in that process do you want me to come back to the other your question about the performance or was that? So again it's just looking at that whole performance some of the measures we do is how do we from an economic perspective have this performance indicator that we have a performance group led by one of our colleagues from Dundee City Council fantastic group looking at the whole leverage of activity across the economic agencies and I think we have probably something like £495 million of budget going across 32 local authorities economic development and some 1600 staff working in these services that includes the gateway support so how do we measure more effectively the access to finance, investment, infrastructure access to procurement opportunities supply chain improvements around employment land I could go on there's lots we do so the slide indicators actually identifies that and there's still room for improvement I'm sure you'll probably see that when you see them coming out in two weeks but we do have some fantastic figures Just my final points I'll roll with two questions together to widen it out to everybody else we heard this morning and in previous evidence that the business support landscape is a complex and cluttered so one what efforts are being made in order to provide the one stop shop that businesses are looking for and secondly given this cluttered landscape is there any gaps in that support that need to be filled that currently aren't being met I'm happy to start it Yes indeed and I think the whole premise around the enterprise and skills review started with that cluttered landscape what can we do so there is no doubting that businesses do find it very confusing to navigate that landscape there is a whole slew of recommendations that have emerged from the strategic framework of the enterprise and skills board so I think there we need that journey to start in terms of some of that but it can't be for example business gateway and other organisations that are delivering special services so I think that's one key point we are at the beginning of another set of recommendations or actions taking place so what that looks like or making sure that those recommendations actually do lead to less complexity is going to be hugely important I think the second point around gaps to be filled we've heard about whether businesses want specialist advice or they want a blended approach and I think we could talk quite a lot about supporting women led businesses we can talk about social enterprises etc so every business considers themselves unique so it's how can we maximise that feeling of uniqueness for them but actually against the affordability that we have a one-stop portal is really vital that everyone can use that is backed up by our good CRM as well also to be able to showcase what we do have and I had a quick look at our own website and we actually didn't showcase a couple of great things that we have like our women and business network that we have like the really good digital boost programme we've got it there but we don't actually explain it and that would help signpost people the gap that I see that we do have it is for the medium-sized businesses the businesses that do want to grow and they have established but where do they go they're not right for SE and they may not think that they could come to business gateway but actually they can and if we were really clever we would wrap them up and the wrap around that the council services actually deliver the ones that are statrically obliged to deliver as in planning as in environmental health as in trading standards and we would have the right people giving the right advice at the right time so that's maybe one of the challenges not so much a business gateway part but an economic development and council challenge to make sure that we're thinking about the businesses needs all the way through and directing them to the right people and directing them to business gateway would be a lot smarter than directing them to a mere amateur who wouldn't even know what they're doing so maybe a lot of it is not just engaging with our partners and making sure that they know what we do but engaging with the people we work with every day and yourselves so you know what business gateway can do for business sorry I was just going to echo the point it is a cluttered landscape we understand that, we recognise that we're working very closely with Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland particularly in Glasgow and at a regional level and there's definitely efficiencies that we can make Angela Constance Thank you, convener The panel will have heard the discussion earlier about how the business support network perhaps needs to find different and better ways to reach out to underrepresented groups in terms of encouraging more women-led start-ups but there's also other underrepresented groups in terms of people from more disadvantaged backgrounds people living with disabilities young people and people from a black and minority ethnic background so I'm quite interested to hear from those that are closest to the front line what you're currently doing what's working well what's not working so well and also whether you had any view on the suggestion that for example in terms of supporting women that there needs to be a national policy driven approach and I think I would like to start with Ms Faulkner if that's all right I'm very impressed with the work that's done in Dumfries and Galloway working with the group that we do have there I had the pleasure of spending time with them and you begin to see what added value they can do that they have very innovative ways of undertaking solutions and very solutions focused we also have a very a very buoyant and good skills and employability team who tend to work more with disadvantaged groups and disadvantaged people and looking at our scope I think that we can use first of all make certain that people have access to the business gateway information and what it can do for individuals who may want to set up their own business through skills and employability but also working with other public sector partners who do work with those groups and work with them a lot better than we do and make certain that they know what we're doing and that's through our community partnerships that we have our local community partnerships can bring so much more we work together in our local improvement plans it would be much better to bring people in in a natural way than sort of saying point blank okay go and see your disadvantaged groups because that's not the way to do it we have creative groups we have different sector groups who may or may not want to have their own businesses in rural areas it's very challenging and we have more social enterprises who want to be enterprising businesses so it depends on the sectors of the particular area a city will be quite different from a rural area which will be quite different from islands and so it needs to be naturally done but using the networks that we always already have Can I just follow that up quickly Ms Faulkner if for example women are receiving less support from the business support network than their male peers how specifically would you address that First of all I would need the measurement I don't have the measurement to know whether they are or not I did read the document but I didn't know where that measurement came from I'm unaware and I'd have to go through I would have to do some research and get some research done but I don't have that information to my fingertips to see that there are disadvantaged groups that are not getting the level of support that they needed hence why I answered the question the way that I did I didn't mean to say that it doesn't exist but I don't have that information Okay I mean we've touched upon this issue about lack of data and information earlier I just wondered Mr Smith from your Glasgow experience if there was anything you wanted to bring to the table Yeah there's four points I would like to make first of all we've got a dedicated BME adviser that engages widely with ethnic minority community and does extensive work and going out and trying to support the growth of businesses in many new start businesses so that's the first thing second one we have a very successful women in business programme that's been going for a number of years now very well established and highly effective in addition to that we in Glasgow have a very strong focus on social enterprises and through the Glasgow partnership for economic growth and bringing business gateway we're working with social enterprise partners in the city to grow the business base to ensure that we've got that inclusive growth dimension that's organic and growing within the city it's maybe one for parlor and I know that colleagues elsewhere we're also looking at supported businesses and how we can most effectively engage with supported businesses to help support them in recruiting and retaining individuals and staff with disabilities so those are four examples of what we're doing and I'm sure Pamela will have something to add unless there's something you want to follow up on I just wondered, Stevenson, if you could perhaps address the point about the balance between local and nationally driven policy particularly with regards to advanced inequalities okay so first of all just on the activity around what we are doing at local and national level some shot of 50,000 2017-18 employability participants were engaged in economic services and just short of 17,000 people were supported into work I've got quite a lot of the stats in fact from the 18 lead local authorities so Jan, I do have your data here if you don't and there is a variety of fantastic programmes going on for Syrian refugees for migrant workers, for women led activities particularly working with Scottish Enterprise and SDS around our pay support for task force, for recovery of mass scale redundancies translation services and I think as Graeme rightly said some of the work we do around supported businesses particularly around our local and national policies for procurement and collaboration and how we engage through our local authorities led supply development programme which is a national programme delivered by all our local authorities that really does have a role around how we engage our local potential equalities around collaboration and community benefits so we're working on how do we deliver alternative community benefits not just from an employability perspective but how do we ensure some of our community groups also get access through social enterprise and community enterprises access to some of the public sector funds and breakdown of some of the lots of supplies of our services across the regional and national agencies terms of policy we do not have from a slade or a business gateway contract policy on how we interpret and deliver our start-up services say for women or engagement it's a mainstream service we do have 47% of women's stats from 1718 that's fantastic lots of women fantastic women's programmes going on in fact I and others who all attended the women's enterprise Scotland awards last week what we are currently doing in line with what we feel maybe is a gap in how we work more effectively women's enterprise Scotland rather than having people reinvent at a national level our gateway team through our business gateway operational network are currently as we speak looking to pull together a brief to produce a national business gateway women's led programme that we can look at in collaboration with our national agencies but not in isolation of all the other inclusivity requirements needed what is the priority for us and we do need to have some of these further discussions with some of these national groups what is the priority we can't do it all so what one do we address and how do we make sure that we have local services to do it and if not how do we work with our national support agencies to come into our regions to support us and provide their skills to deliver these things okay thank you very briefly from Dean Lockhart just had a couple of supplementals based on what we've heard and we've wrapped them up together the first is on targets because Scottish Government figures show that business gateway invested 12.6 million last year in start-ups which is the lowest level since 2009 so I'd like to get some brief ideas or thoughts as to what's behind the decline was it primarily budget cuts and the second question relates to e-commerce we heard from the previous panel that Scotland is far behind the rest of the UK in terms of using e-commerce I'd like to get your views on do your organisations have the necessary skillset to help businesses develop e-commerce for example do you have a dedicated team that is looking at e-commerce thank you as for e-commerce we have an expert person in there we also bring in additional resource for e-commerce with respect to the decline in start-ups that investment I'm not certain where that comes from I know that we have made a small amount of savings but we also invest a lot of staff time and use other resources what I do know that I still have the same staff complement and we do assist each other and work together to help our start-ups but it's more than just start-ups it's also growing businesses that we invest in supporting to answer the budget implications I'm not here today to talk about local authorities financial positions I can share with you some of the information we have around all of the local authorities in terms of budget savings not from a qualified number but particularly around the impact and across all of the lead areas and some of the other local authorities there has been budget savings made over the last couple of years in the main majority is saying that it has not made any difference to the impact on services some of it has actually been because the efficiencies have come from bringing it from outhouse to inhouse there has not really been a reduction in services and in some cases the money that we do have to deliver gateway services has been instrumental in delivering and supporting the successful programmes for SME competitiveness allowing us to access up to 14 million using about a 34 million budget pot of expenditure to deliver additional services to lever in more impact into the gateway services from an e-commerce perspective e-commerce has always been fundamental to delivery of local activity from a business gateway even back to when we had our Scottish Enterprise's first e-commerce first steps programme that was always embedded in our gateway services our digital boost programme that's led by our business gateway national unit which is receiving umpteen awards it's a fantastic programme I hope everyone agrees across Scotland hopefully the government will help us continue it moving into 1920 but this has actually really allowed us to work with our local businesses to capacity build them to understand that having great broadband and access to connectivity is not the same as having digital technical solutions that makes them competitive so having these additional programmes allowed us to work more advanced with some of our businesses to stimulate to raise awareness but also to have that one-to-one ICT e-commerce and digital solutions support to work with our business gateway clients to get them to understand how they have to be competitive and the solutions Government having just introduced and launched I believe about a week ago a new digital loan fund that we're hopeful as well will work in tandem with some of the work we're doing with our digital boost and services to access a commercial loan to allow them to look at the capital investment needed to become more digital to become more competitive Well, thank you very much I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today I appreciate it's a bit difficult to try and get in what you might want to say on issues and sometimes you don't have the facts or figures to hand so to all of the witnesses please feel free to write in to provide any supplemental comment so that you don't feel you've had the time to fully answer it Thank you very much for coming in today Thank you for your time We'll allow a few minutes for the witnesses to leave then we'll move to the next item of business directly The further item of business which is item 3 consideration of a proposal by the Scottish Government to consent to the UK Government legislating using the powers in union withdrawal act 2018 in relation to the proposed UK statutory instrument the renewables obligation amendment EU exit regulations 2018 The notification suggests that this is a category A proposal in other words a technical one with minimum policy choice or only one obvious policy solution so the UK government proposes to amend the order to remove references to the UK being a member state and to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union Equally references to the role of the European Commission will of course no longer apply and therefore fall away The actual legislation will continue to function exactly as it does now So the question is is the committee content for these matters to be dealt with by statutory instruments laid at Westminster If the committee is content I will write to the minister for energy connectivity and the islands to notify him of the committee's decision All content Thank you, we'll now move to private session