Turnover Magazine

tween 30% and 40%.
According to data from the Start Up
Loans Company there have been 59,021
loans approved and a total of £447,953,626
loaned since the beginning of the programme
in September 2012. 14,150
businesses in London have received
£108,791,793, while 44,871 businesses
have benefited outside the capital, with
a total of £339,161,833 being received by
start-ups.
The Start Up Loans Company “has lent
money to people in every part of the country
and its impact has been particularly
noticeable in areas of deprivation.” In the
North East alone, 3,515 loans have been
approved and over £26million has been
lent.
According to--– data from the scheme,
since 2012 a total of 41% of entrepreneurs
who started a business using Start
Up Loans were unemployed prior to applying.
A total of 38% of individuals also
come from 20% of the most deprived areas
of the UK. But Louisa Rogers, Founder of
Newcastle based TrendListr, said: “I think
the difficulty we have in the North East
is that a lot of the funding available is for
rural businesses who have little to no support,
but when you’re in the city centre it is
assumed that you have access to resources
which isn’t always the case.”
TrendListr is a vintage retailer and are
currently working on their own collection.
Ms Rogers added: “A lot of the funding is
very sector specific and if you’re a business
doing something like we are trying to do,
where we are going into manufacturing in
the UK, that seems to be neglected.”
A spokeswoman for the Start Up Loans
Company said: “In terms of the support
we give to applicants, we pride ourselves
on supporting people from all walks of life
and we strive to give all applicants from
across the UK every opportunity to succeed,
both with the loan application and
with their businesses as a whole.”
Alastair Wilson, Chief Executive of
the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE),
which helps 1,000 people every year develop
the skills, strengths and networks
to start, scale and strengthen businesses,
said: “One of the big problems for entrepreneurs
is access to finance, so I think
initiatives like the Government’s Start Up
Loan scheme are excellent.
“But the slight problem is that it works
for people who are starting businesses in
functional markets and in communities
that are winning because they have a good
chance of success and good local money
circulation.
“But how do you widen the net, how
do you bring in communities that are really
struggling both in terms of people
who are facing challenges in their lives and
communities with low money circulation.
I think if we want to begin to regenerate
areas of the UK that have really been left
behind, just debt as the only tool is not going
to help.
Mr Wilson added: “The Government
needs to be more creative to help those areas
help themselves and move forward and
I don’t think that means pumping them
full of loans, because that doesn’t help
areas move on. I don’t think it stimulates
the type of self-employment and entrepreneurship
that we need to see. I think we
need to think about how we apply loans in
a way that incentivises empowered behaviours,
so I think the Government need to
think of policy and intervention beyond
just loans.”
Every entrepreneur who receives funding
from the Start Up Loans Company is
allocated a mentor for up to 12 months to
help them with every aspect of setting up
their business from writing their business
plan to marketing, but Mr Wilson still believes
more needs to be done.
He added: “If you are really living and
working in one of the poorest neighbourhoods
in the North East of England and
you try to set up a business on a street
where most of the shops are bordered up,
you’re going to struggle. We need to think
more creatively about how we build broken
markets.”
According to data released by the
Centre for Entrepreneurs (CFE), which is
the UK’s leading entrepreneurship think
tank, there was 15,190 businesses started
in 2018 in the North East. The region
saw the highest increase in the amount of
start-ups, with a rise of 13%. Darlington
saw the highest increase in the UK, with a
rise of 149%, while Gateshead, Newcastle
and North Tyneside all noticed increases
of over 10%.
Matt Smith, Co-Founder and Director
of CFE said: “I think about 5-10 years ago,
[people were moving to London to startup
businesses] but we have now seen ecosystems
really strengthen across the UK,
and you can raise money and actually it’s
far less of an issue than it once was.”
A survey conducted by Turnover revealed
54% of people don’t think businesses
based in London are at an advantage,
and only 29% would relocate to the capital
to progress. The survey had 58 respondents
who own their own businesses in the
UK outside of the capital.
Although London is still the leading
region in the UK to start your own business,
these figures show it is not the only
place good ideas can get off the ground.
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