Three top businessmen have set up their own not-for-profit business support service because they say the assembly government’s service is too bureaucratic.
Investment fund manager Paul Ragan, MSS group chief executive Bill Mayne and Cardiff Devils ice hockey owner Matt Burge told the Politics Show Wales public sector provided business support was being held back by too much red tape.
The three have launched a new service called Collateral Thinking.
The assembly government said that was not the experience of the vast majority of companies using their Flexible Support for Business service.
Paul Ragan, who sold his south Wales-based insurance company last year in a multi-million pound deal, said the present business support environment was “stifling”.
“Over a number of years we’ve been frustrated at the lack of support, the bureaucracy and red tape,” he said.
“If you’re the man on the street, if you’re the lady running a business in Abercynon, where do you go, how do you get the help?
“Nobody really knows. It’s complicated, it’s too bureaucratic and if you do manage to find out where you go and how you access this help, be prepared to wait for two, three, four, five, nine months depending on the support you need. There is no guarantee you’ll get there either.”
Fitness instructor and inventor Robert Clarke from Gorseinon, who is hoping to bring a new muscle-stretching machine to market, said delays in getting an assembly government grant had held back his business.
“It stalled the project for two months,” he said.
“If I’m going to bring jobs to Wales it’s very reasonable for me to ask for faster processes.”
Mr Clarke’s company Sportfit is now one of the first companies to receive support from Collateral Thinking.
“Collateral Thinking is born out of our frustration actually of being entrepreneurs in an environment that we don’t think is naturally that suitable for business,” said Mr Mayne, Chief Executive of facilities management company MSS Group.