University awarded £2 million for business support programme

The University of Brighton has been awarded £2 million by the Higher Education Funding Council to extend its hugely successful peer support programme for small businesses – ProfitNet. The initiative was developed two years ago in Hastings and has already benefited over 80 businesses. It will now be developed in Crawley, Brighton and West Sussex with the results of the programme helping to drive national policy on how universities can support local small and medium sized enterprises.

The free programme uses the Learning Networks model to get businesses in the same sector, some of them initially competitors to work together to find solutions to common business problems.  Current members of ProfitNet have seen substantial increases in profits thanks to the programme and the approach has proved so popular that nearly every company involved has asked for it to be continued.

“ProfitNet is like having a team of highly skilled consultants on hand that you don’t have to pay!” said Paul Evans of Marshall Tufflex.

Managing Director of Telham Training, Sarah White, commented: “Between us the members of my group had over 300 years experience in construction and technical services.  I was able to build relationships, share expertise and do business with other members of the group.”

Manager of the ProfitNet programme Anjuu Trevedi said: “ProfitNet has made a huge difference to companies in Hastings as members have used their combined knowledge, talents and experiences to problem-solve and innovate. Now the success of the Hastings-based project will now be replicated across Sussex.”