Rural enterprise support: evaluation report

4. What was delivered?

Key Points

During the intervention, the following KPIs were met:

• Provision of enterprise support
• Supporting start-ups in Perth and Kinross
• Provision of events

However, the following KPIs were not met in full due to refocussing work to support rural businesses during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic:

• Supporting start-up formation outside of Perth and Kinross, though some online support was given to business start-ups in the South of Scotland, after the pandemic arrived.
• Regional collaborations
• Delivery of ‘all digital’ platforms. However, the successes of Perthshire adventure and Perthshire artisans should be noted.

Overall, the shortcomings in delivery can partially be understood as reflecting the unprecedented disruption resulting from Coronavirus (COVID-19). At the same time, they also indicate challenges in extending the providers’ efforts beyond their local area and the importance of local relationships, and that additional support may be needed to achieve this. The intervention relating to the development of digital platforms would have benefitted from greater specification.

4.1 Enterprise support

The KPI for the pilot required the provider to, by October 2020, have provided business support to 750 enterprises. Support was provided one-to-one for 511 unique businesses, with an additional 396 businesses attending peer learning sessions. Accounting for those who attended both, this results in a total of 751 unique businesses supported. In turn, there were 2,428 individual meetings with businesses.

4.2 Supporting start-ups

The KPIs specified that 50 new business starts in the Perth and Kinross area should be supported alongside an additional 40 start-ups in other areas. In Perth and Kinross, the provider supported 93 start-ups, with a further 20 at the pre-start up stage. Outwith Perth and Kinross the provider supported 10 pre start-ups and 27 new start-ups.

The pilot had less success in providing support outside of Perth and Kinross. In the first instance, this is not surprising, given the extensive experience of GrowBiz within their local area. All things being equal, the reputation and presence of the provider in their primary location would make it easier to obtain clients in their local area.

4.3 Events

The KPIs specified that 150 events should be provided. During the pilot period, 159 events with a total of 1,939 participants was reported. Owing to Coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions, events went online in March 2020, with participants using Zoom to participate. It is worth noting that the effective adaptation to Coronavirus (COVID-19) was praised by participants taking part in the qualitative research.

4.4 Collaboration with National Parks/Local Authority areas

The KPIs specified that five collaborations should be undertaken during the period. However, only two have been achieved – in Stirling and the Cairngorms. As the delivery partners noted, there were considerable challenges in effectively working with other local authority partners. This was perceived as a result of the presence of local authority-procured business support that could be considered to provide similar services.

4.5 Smart Villages/Enabling Digital Platforms

At the end of the project, the following table regarding the status of the development of digital platforms was provided (see Table 1).

4.6 Participant demographics and business sectors

Whilst data was collected relating to businesses that used the service overall, it would be beneficial for additional demographic and business sector data to be collected in future pilots.

However, based on the data obtained during the one-to-one business support interactions the following distribution of businesses across sectors during the intervention period were engaged with (see Figure 2).

Precisely half of the total provided here comprise businesses within the Tourism/Recreation, Art & Creative Services, and Care, Health and Wellbeing sectors. Going forward, ongoing monitoring of the sectoral distribution of support will be essential from the perspective of ensuring that business support is equally appropriate and applicable to a variety of sectors within the rural economy.

Similarly, gender information is available for the businesses that had received one to one support. It shows that the support was used more by women than men.

4.7 Business support spending

The service provider gave a breakdown of how Scottish Government funding was used during the pilot. This can be seen in Figure 4.

4.8 Conclusion

This review of management information associated with delivery of the project has indicated that:

• The provider delivered many of the agreed outputs, including the administration of business support, events and start-ups in their local area.
• By contrast, regional collaborations and the development of the digital platforms component of the intervention were less successful.