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Essential Guide to Starting a Business Launched by Start Up Loans Programme for Budding Entrepreneurs

Press release 01 October 2024

Start Up Loans, part of the British Business Bank, has today launched a new, free, interactive resource for aspiring business owners, called the ‘Essential Guide to Starting a Business’. The guide has been developed to provide useful and jargon-free guidance to help small business owners navigate the current small business landscape.

The resource contains a step-by-step guide for launching a business and covers 10 key topics in a simple and easily digestible format. There’s also a jargon-busting glossary for business owners to reference.

The topics include: researching your idea, business strategy and plan, company structure explained, incorporating your business, business finances explained, access to finance, tax explained, setting up a supply chain, marketing your business, networking, protecting the intellectual property of your business and lastly jargon busting.

The Guide is aimed at first time business owners, taking them through much of the basics of setting up a business.

As well as outlining the above, the Guide contains some information that may not be widely known. For example, did you know, a registered design is protected for up to 25 years but must be renewed every five years? Or that, when it comes to corporation tax, companies with a profit of £50,000 or less pay the 19% ‘small profits rate’.

Richard Bearman, Managing Director of Small Business Lending, British Business Bank, said:

I am a strong believer that anyone can be a business owner, no matter what their background or experience – they just need the right support and guidance to get started. Our new guide is designed to do just that, offering free, practical pointers and a step-by-step roadmap for those at the start of their business journey.

Start Up Loans exists to provide funding and support for business owners hoping to start or scale up their ventures. This includes individuals who would not yet consider themselves ‘business owners’ or ‘entrepreneurs’, but rather just regular people pursuing their passions. These are the people who often need a bit of additional support when starting out and I hope that they find the Essential Guide to Starting a Business a useful resource.

So if you need to know more about the differences between a cash flow statement and a balance sheet before setting up a business, download the ‘Essential Guide to Starting a Business’.

Through a network of Business Support Partner organisations, the Start Up Loans programme provides access to pre-and-post loan support to help applicants develop a business plan; fixed-interest 6% personal loans of up to £25,000 to help recipients to start or grow their business; and mentoring support to help loan recipients with everything from cash flow to marketing.

Further Information

If you are a journalist and have a media enquiry, please contact [email protected].

Notes to editors

About Start Up Loans

The Start Up Loans programme is operated by The Start-Up Loans Company, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, registration number 08117656, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ.

The Start-Up Loans Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of British Business Bank plc. 
British Business Bank plc is a development bank wholly government-owned by DBT and is not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The British Business Bank and its subsidiary entities are not banking institutions and do not operate as such.

Free guides on a range of subjects related to starting a business are available on the Start Up Loans website. You can find recent media press releases here.

The British Business Bank makes finance markets for smaller businesses work better, helping the sector to prosper, to grow and to build economic activity.

Key Statistics

  • Since its inception in 2012, the Start Up Loans scheme has delivered over 115,000 loans, providing more than £1.13bn of funding.
  • In the financial year 2023/24, the scheme provided 9,759 loans with a total value of approximately £125m. 
  • The economic benefits of the Start Up Loans programme are almost six (5.7) times its economic costs.
  • Since 2012, 31% of loans went to people formerly unemployed or economically inactive. 40% of loan recipients were women and 20% were from ethnic minority groups (not including white minorities).

Aside from the return-on-investment numbers these statistics are gross estimates and based on Start Up Loans CRM along with externally commissioned research undertaken by SQW Ltd, with support from BMG Research.

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