Barclays is providing a bespoke support programme to local businesses to help the UK’s economic recovery. Focusing first in Bury, one of Barclays’ Rebuilding Thriving Local Economies (RTLE) pilot areas, the package offers support to boost growth for local businesses.

The RTLE initiative will provide a range of support to businesses and communities, as Barclays engages with leaders across government, the business community and the education sector to provide practical skills at a local level.
As its first step this year, the RTLE initiative is offering a package of support to businesses in Bury, which includes access to the following programmes:

· The Back to Business Programme, created in partnership with Cambridge Judge Business School, is a free, bespoke online toolkit for businesses with over 15 hours’ worth of content, developed especially for small-to-medium sized enterprises. Participants will be able to learn how to assess the health of a business, how to manage cash flow, and how to create a resilience plan for their firm.
· For business owners looking to grow or finance new business lines, the Funding Readiness programme is designed to explain the funding options available to entrepreneurs and provide the skills and knowledge needed to fund business growth.

Bury is one of four pilot areas in the Barclays Rebuilding Thriving Local Economies initiative. RTLE focuses on understanding needs and opportunities on the ground in pilot sites in different parts of the country: Bury (a metropolitan borough), Kilmarnock (a smaller UK town), Taunton Deane (a rural community) and Great Yarmouth (a coastal town). The Barclays support for business initiatives will be available for up to 1,000 individual businesses across each programme, with firms in RTLE pilot areas encouraged to sign up first.

Andrew Horner, Head of SME at Barclays in the North West, said: “Now more than ever, it’s imperative that we support business growth across the country. We’ve seen the impact of the pandemic on small and medium-sized businesses and now is the time to provide important skills, mentoring and funding advice so that we can support local economies to recover and thrive.”

Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, Leader of Bury Council, said: “Our partnership with Barclays through this initiative is incredibly important for our immediate recovery from Covid and our long term ambitions for Bury. As a Council, we know how vital small and medium-sized businesses are to our economy and local communities. This additional support from Barclays will therefore greatly complement the plans we have at the Council to deliver the strongest possible recovery for local businesses.“

The Thriving Local Economies initiative was initially launched in Bury in 2018, however, as the pandemic has brought new challenges, the initiative has shifted focus to identify how local economies can recover from the effects of Covid and how Barclays can support them in doing so.

The business programmes are the first in a series of packages of support to be announced throughout the year in Bury, which will further aid local businesses, provide access to skills and training and boost the aspiration and confidence of young people in the local community.

Businesses wishing to access the Back to Business or Funding Readiness programmes should visit: labs.barclays/capital-enterprise and https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/executive-education/barclays/barclays-back-to-business-programme/ .

Business leaders in the North West are calling for next month’s Budget to prioritise commitments to level up the region, increase support for digital transformation, and provide incentives for employers to invest in skills development and talent attraction.

These are the top asks reported in a survey of the region’s leading mid-market businesses, carried out by Grant Thornton UK LLP earlier this month.

Despite the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, business sentiment in the North West was largely positive, with more than 40% of respondents very optimistic about revenue growth over the remainder of the year, and 48% at least somewhat optimistic.

This corresponded with overall confidence on the outlook for the UK economy with four in 10 business leaders feeling very positive about the outlook for the country in the months ahead.

There was some inter-regional variation on which COVID-19 support measures would be most helpful to extend. Business leaders in the Liverpool City Region (LCR) called for the COVID-19 Corporate Financing Facility to continue, with 46% citing it as the most important, compared to just a third of respondents nationally. One in four Greater Manchester-based businesses want the Chancellor to extend the business rates holiday as a priority. This was also cited as a key support measure by 30% of LCR respondents.

In a list of longer-term policies aimed at eliciting structural change, almost a third (29%) of North West leaders want Rishi Sunak to unveil tangible commitments to levelling up, with more devolution and investment in the region.
Other top priorities differed slightly between the North West’s two largest city-regions. Businesses in the Liverpool City Region called for more support and incentives to encourage businesses to invest in skills and training.
The report found this was the overwhelming priority with 40% of businesses demanding the Budget to deliver in this area.
In Greater Manchester, support for businesses to adopt and benefit from digital transformation was flagged as a major priority, with 27% of businesses citing it as vital.

Carl Williams, North West Managing Partner at Grant Thornton said: “It’s unsurprising to see widespread calls for an extension to the business rates holiday. The North West has been particularly hard hit by restrictions placed on retail and leisure businesses. The Chancellor must continue to support them properly as we approach what we all hope is the end of lockdown.

“The overall sense of optimism amid mid-market business leaders is gratifying and tallies with our experience of advising clients during the pandemic. Across the board, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience, innovation, and spirit in the face of unprecedented challenge. It’s now time for a Budget which rewards this: with tangible financial commitments to the devolution agenda; and support for businesses to invest in the new skills, re-training, and digital ways of working which will be key for sustainable businesses and rewarding careers.”