£2.9million enterprise research centre aims to drive SME policy

The facility, a joint collaboration between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the British Bankers Association, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), is aimed at developing a greater understanding of the factors affecting business investment, performance and growth. "The government is committed to boosting enterprise and giving entrepreneurs the right environment to be successful and grow," said Business and Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk, pictured. "We are creating a network of thousands of business mentors and providing quality coaching to a range of high growth potential businesses. We are also launching a £10million startup loan scheme to provide young people with a range of business support and access to a small amount of capital to start their business." The call for proposals to form the centre opens today, and will close on 4 September 2012. Applications are welcomed from academic institutions across the UK with relevant expertise. It is expected that the successful bidder will be announced in the autumn. Iain Gray, chief executive of the TSB, said: "It's essential that we gain a better understanding of the way innovative SMEs in the UK access finance. We can use this knowledge to flex and develop our programmes so that they are even more tightly aligned to business needs. The Technology Strategy Board already provides a range of programmes and tools to help business develop and commercialise their products and this new centre will help us to build on the support we provide."