Building Up Business: The launch of our programme

Posted March 20, 2025

Operating a small business can be a hugely rewarding experience, and small business owners play a pivotal role in the UK economy. The challenge is that many people are extremely passionate about their trade, but do not start their business with a high level of existing knowledge and skills to confidently manage their business finances. Whilst there are some resources out there to try and counter this problem, these are often disjointed, inconsistent or inaccessible to those who need them most.

In partnership with Aviva, today we have launched our Building Up Business programme – comprising of our research report and our virtual learning. Drawing on our expertise from Business Debtline, and our experience as a training provider, we wanted to build the financial resilience of small business owners across the UK, and help support more businesses to thrive.

The Building Up Business programme aims to do just that. Through our research and recommendations, with the help of the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre, we are sharing new insight to inform approaches to business finance skills support.

Our findings show that there is a clear business finance skills gap: 

• 2 in 5 Business Debtline clients do not feel confident navigating their business finances 
• Only 1 in 10 Business Debtline clients said they had used any of the government-funded business support helplines 
• Just 2 in 5 micro-traders agree there is good business support available for small business owners 

Crucially, our research with micro-traders across the UK demonstrated how a lack of skills and confidence can hold small businesses back. Among those who were not confident managing their business finances, one in five (18%) said they had delayed business growth or investment opportunities as a result of this. One in ten (11%) micro-traders looking to grow their business identified their lack of skills or confidence managing business finances as a key barrier to growth.

All of this rich insight has helped us to carve out our recommendations for the Government and others, on what could help to close the business finance skills and confidence gap:

1. The Department for Business and Trade should use the Small Business Strategy to work with the small business sector to develop innovative approaches to delivering tailored, one-to-one finance skills support to micro-business owners.
2. HMRC should continue to invest in tools to help small business owners understand and manage their tax obligations, evaluating and sharing the impact of changes to business guidance.
3. Financial services firms, business energy providers and other creditors should review customer journeys and maximise opportunities to signpost to Business Debtline and the Building Up Business free virtual learning.

However, this isn’t just about what others can do. We’re piloting a brand new, free resource for small businesses. Using insight from our research, and our decades of experience running Business Debtline, we’ve developed a series of videos designed to help small business owners and self-employed people understand, and feel confident managing their business finances.

You’ll find bitesize videos on key elements of business finances, including taxes, trading statuses, cashflow and understanding finance agreements. You can view the videos at building-up-business.org.

If you’d like to find out more, please visit the Building Up Business webpage. If you’re an organisation or firm working with small business owners, and would like to talk about how you can signpost to the Building Up Business learning please get in touch by emailing partnerships@moneyadvicetrust.org.

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