Forest Of Dean Entrepreneurs

This was a partnership project providing valued support for start-up businesses, though the baton has now been passed to other organisations.

The Forest of Dean is traditionally a very entrepreneurial place, and local people have been using their skills to make a living from a wide range of services and products for centuries.

Starting a business can be a thrilling though daunting experience, but following the closure of the Government’s Business Link offices, if you wanted to start a business in the Forest of Dean then you would have to travel out of the Forest of Dean District to access specialist business start-up support, training and advice.

Miranda Jenkins of local training specialists Skills to Go and myself spent much of 2012 networking within the local business community to explore the best way to ensure that there was local provision for people needing business start-up assistance.

After the launch of the Forest of Dean Entrepreneurs project in February 2013, training courses, workshops and business start-up guidance were freely available, with the backing of Adult Education in Gloucestershire, Job Centre Plus and local business people Graham Wildin of Wildin & Co. Accountants, Andrew Callard of WSI Leading E-solutions & Sarah Jones of The Chocolate Strawberry.

In its first nine months the project ran four free half-day business start-up taster workshops at a range of venues across the Forest of Dean, three Dean Entrepreneurs business start-up courses and two accredited Level 2 business qualifications. A total of 135 people engaged with the project during this time and of those 68 took part in one or more of the free and subsidized training courses on offer.

All this would not have been possible without the backing of a group of local companies who have provided financial sponsorship:

Times have now changed with the advent of the Growth Hub service in Gloucestershire, including a Forest Growth Hub due to open at Vantage Point in Mitcheldean. In the meantime, the University of Gloucestershire has been able to develop Start and Grow Enterprise with the help of European Funding, offering free support to new and start-up businesses. You can find contact details for this and other support services on the Forest of Dean District Council’s website by following this link