Wales’s biggest business group has called for significant strengthening of business support to unlock the full potential of Wales’s SMEs. With two thirds of small businesses looking to grow their business and half wanting to become more productive, these ambitions demonstrate the key role SMEs can play in achieving the Welsh Government’s growth aspirations.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in Wales has this week published a report, Cultivating Small Business Growth, which found high recognition levels for business support institutions across Wales. The report concludes that Wales’s approach of developing a ‘one stop shop’ approach to business support via Business Wales represents a significant strategic and competitive advantage by simplifying access for businesses. Notably, over half of businesses accessing support via Business Wales reported a positive experience.
The report does however reveal a concerning decline in funding allocated to business support since the UK left the European Union and proposes a series of recommendations to address this shortfall in order to fully leverage the benefits of the system.
FSB’s analysis of the business support process in Wales has also identified key opportunities for improvement, specifically centred around enhancing the user journey with increased access to expert advice, strengthening of accountability across the system, and dedicated resource to provide specialised, intensive support for SMEs demonstrating clear ambition and the potential to scale.
John Hurst, FSB Wales Chair, said:
“Effective business support, including access to advice, training, and funding opportunities, plays a crucial role in empowering individuals to start and scale their businesses, generating prosperity across the nation.
“FSB’s research shows that where support works, businesses thrive. However, to fully unlock Wales’s growth potential, the Welsh Government must restore funding levels to those in place before the UK left the EU and drive improvements through the system.
“By strengthening oversight, improving the accessibility and consistency of services provided, and introducing vouchers to enable small businesses to access private expertise, we can improve delivery of business support in Wales.
“The new local growth funding which will replace the Shared Prosperity Fund, as announced during the Spending Review 2025, will be vital to help businesses chart a course towards stable economic recovery. This investment must be strategically pledged and deployed within a unified system, reinforcing our business support institutions and placing them firmly on a growth footing.
“Ultimately, to grow our economy, we must empower our entrepreneurs to be the engine of that growth.”
Jane Wallace-Jones, Founder and CEO of Something Different Wholesale, said:
“Business Wales’s Accelerated Growth Programme and the Development Bank of Wales have played a key role in our journey at Something Different Wholesale. The expert guidance and financial support we have accessed have allowed us to navigate growth challenges, make meaningful sustainability investments, and positively impact our community.
“FSB Wales’s report rightly highlights the critical importance of access to expertise that truly understands local market and specific needs, with a welcome emphasis on creating a system that offers more accessible, consistent, and targeted support to a wider range of entrepreneurs.
“Ultimately, it’s about fostering a system that allows Welsh business owners to do what we do best; innovate, develop and grow, and show what Wales has to offer.”
Key Recommendations include:
- A properly resourced system: The Welsh Government should restore funding levels for business support in Wales in real terms to those in place before leaving the EU, and commit to multi-year budgets, utilising new local growth funding as announced during the Spending Review 2025.
- Improving the user journey: Business support organisations can improve the experience of those accessing their services by increasing face-to-face engagement, setting targets for how quickly queries receive a response, and implementing a ‘case officer’ approach with a named point of contact for substantive support.
- Enabling access to expertise: The Welsh Government should work with Business Wales to develop a voucher system that enables small businesses to access specialist expertise via the private sector.
- Strengthening accountability: The Welsh Government should establish a Business Growth Board to convene stakeholders from across the business support landscape, including service users, to assess delivery against key performance targets, to understand the effectiveness of outreach to groups traditionally underrepresented in business support, and to ensure that services remain dynamic and responsive to evolving future needs.
- Addressing the missing middle: Additional resource should be targeted at an account management function to provide specialised and intensive support – such as tailored mentorship, access to growth finance, and innovation and technology adaptation support – to SMEs with a clear ambition and potential to scale up their business in order to foster the growth of more medium-sized firms in Wales.
