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Welcome to the CBI

Enterprise

SME Council


Meetings
Priorities
Membership
Current members

The SME Council is the focal point within the CBI for identifying and addressing issues of particular interest to small and medium-sized firms. It provides a voice for them to influence mainstream CBI policy and influence government at home and abroad.


Meetings

 The SME Council meets four times a year; usually in London. SME Council meetings are an opportunity for the Enterprise Group and other CBI policy groups to consult with CBI members on policy issues. The CBI Director-General and the Deputy Director-General often attend meetings as do external guests. Guests have included the Chief Executive of the DTI’s Small Business Service, William Sargent, Executive Chair of the Better Regulation Executive and John Healey MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

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Priorities

 The SME Council is currently focusing on a number of issues:
  • Business support - the CBI is lobbying for a business support network that is demand-driven and customer-led. The Enterprise Group and SME Council are currently engaged in the Business Support Simplification Programme (BSSP), led by the Small Business Service. The BSSP is an exercise announced by the Chancellor in Budget 2006 to reduce the number of business support schemes from 3000 to no more than 100 by 2010.
  • SME tax issues - the main channel for SME Council’s tax work is through the CBI’s Enterprise Budget submissions to HM Treasury ahead of the Budget and Pre-Budget Report. The submissions are traditionally based around the theme of encouraging business growth, through correction of anomalies, tax nothings, simplification and incentives.
  • Regulation - the SME Council work with closely with the CBI’s regulation policy advisers to lobby for a risk-based approach to policy-making, inspection and enforcement, and embedding the culture of ‘think small first’ across Whitehall.
  • Access to finance - work on improving the availability of finance for SMEs has focused on encouraging government to address market failures. In particular the SME Council is calling for the government to seek further ways to address the £250,000 to £3m equity gap facing SMEs seeking growth capital and to make the 'incidental costs', up to £20million, of raising equity finance deductible for corporation tax purposes.


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Membership

 SME Council members are typically owner-managers of small and medium-sized growing businesses. The Council has a membership of around 40 companies, spanning all the UK regions and a wide variety of business sectors.

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Current members

 From January 2008, the SME Council will be chaired by Russel Griggs, a Board member of the IMEs Group.

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Submissions to government

Submissions to government

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