The founder of The Cambridge Satchel Company Julie Deane OBE has today published her independent review of self-employment in the UK. Commissioned by the Prime Minister last year, the review assesses what additional support can be provided to the increasing number of self-employed people across the country, better understand their motivations and reveal the challenges […]
The founder of The Cambridge Satchel Company Julie Deane OBE has today published her independent review of self-employment in the UK.
Commissioned by the Prime Minister last year, the review assesses what additional support can be provided to the increasing number of self-employed people across the country, better understand their motivations and reveal the challenges they face.
The review makes a number of recommendations for the Government to consider and outlines the need of the private sector to recognise the increasing economic potential of the self-employed.
National Enterprise Network commented as follows:-
“We very much welcome the recommendations made in Julie Deane’s review; we were delighted to be consulted as part of the process and are very pleased to see some elements of our discussion are included in the report. In particular our belief that all of those who embark on self-employment are important and Government needs to do more to make sure their value to the economy is more fully felt, they are often inadvertently undermined by Government policies but they are taking risks like any other business owner and are contributing positively, that should be better recognised.
We were also pleased to see reference to the changing nature of the labour force, particularly in regard to the number of self employed people who do not look to grow their businesses by creating additional jobs – this was a key element of our discussion with Julie – based on the experiences of our members we have seen many more self-employed people who have no intention to create jobs, but who frequently come together with other self-employed people to take on bigger contracts and larger assignments – we believe Government should find alternative methods to measure growth in order to respond to this changing way of working.
Last but not least we are most pleased that the value of support was recognised in the report, this is what our members are doing day in and day out and all the evidence shows that those who take advice and support as part of starting a business or becoming self-employed are much more likely to survive and thrive than those who don’t, with this in mind we all need to find ways to do more to encourage them, to support them and to champion them!
We look forward to working with Julie and with Government in developing and implementing the recommendations over the coming months.”
A copy of the report can be found here.
