To promote the sustainability and growth of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), in rural areas of Cumbria, Northumberland and Devon, by examining and encouraging opportunities for collaborative approaches, eg marketing or purchasing co‑operatives, joint service provision and other collaborative business activities.
To enhance the sustainability and growth of businesses in rural areas by developing strategies to ensure successful business succession through stakeholder collaboration.

Case studies showing successful examples of both of these types of businesses are available on the Resources page.

Our aim is to achieve these objectives by:

Giving practical examples and developing practical tools to aid both processes
Working pro-actively with target businesses and groups
Building capacity in business advisors, regeneration bodies and local development partners and raising awareness amongst others involved in the business support network (e.g. solicitors and accountants) of the issues and information available
Mainstreaming the processes and tools to promote excellence within the sector
Creating a vision and a can-do attitude among businesses and their communities and a sense of what can be done through self-help and mutual solutions.

The outcomes of the project will be:

Enhanced awareness of the options among the business community
Greater capacity among business development professionals to carry out the process and practice which lead to success
A knowledge centre (paper and electronic) to back up the work in the field
An increased number of

- successful collaborative ventures between businesses

- businesses being able to survive and go on to success with new forms of ownership

THIS PROJECT IS FUNDED BY THE DEVELOPMENT FUND FOR RURAL RENEWAL

This page is maintained by Graham Mitchell and was last updated on 25/3/2004. Subscribe to changes to this page here.