In the United Kingdom, by far the greatest number of businesses fall into this category. There are more businesses employing less than five employees than all other businesses put together. Yet, when bidding for large contracts – particularly those in the public sector – most of them don’t even get off the starting blocks.
The UK government is solidly committed to giving SME and Micro-Businesses a fair chance when awarding public contracts. In reality, however, relatively few companies in this sector find it easy to get started. The biggest complaints are the requirement for previous public-sector experience, minimum turnover, or prohibitively high insurance cover. Yet there are ways over all these hurdles.
We have the greatest sympathy for any business that is just starting up or trying to grow by pitching for public-sector work. So much sympathy, in fact, that we are prepared to take on a limited amount of work for micro-businesses on a collaborative basis: Reduced or no-fee, on the basis of a share of profits from successful bids.