Exclusive: Small business leaders raise fears over green support overhaul

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has expressed concern over the government's decision to scrap six green business support agencies.

It believes that its members will be adversely affected by moves to create a one-stop shop advisory service under the the Waste Resource Action Programme (WRAP).

Following a review of green business support services, the government announced last week that it is to fold six agencies – The National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), Envirowise, The Centre for Remanufacturing & Reuse, Construction Resources and Waste Platform, Action Sustainability and the Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) centre for local authorities – into WRAP.

Environment secretary Hilary Benn said the changes, which will take effect from next year, will make it easier for firms to access green business advice by providing them with a "one-stop shop for resource efficiency advice".

However, a spokesman for the FSB said that it was concerned about the government's move towards a "one-size-fits-all" approach to green business advice, arguing that WRAP has little experience of supporting smaller firms.

"A lot of the time [larger] agencies like the Carbon Trust and WRAP have dedicated themselves to supporting larger businesses," he said. "Where they have addressed smaller firms it has tended to be mid-sized firms rather than the micro-sized businesses."

He added that a lot of small businesses wanted to adopted greener technologies business models and have already undertaken simple measures such as changing light bulbs.

But he warned that "when it comes to more advanced measures like accessing government green loans and grants they do not know where to go" – a scenario t hat could be made worse by the consolidation of business support agencies.

A spokeswoman for WRAP insisted that the organisation had a "long track record" of supporting small and medium sized businesses, adding that the changes would make it easier for firms to access services.

However, concerns remain that the folding of so many different agencies into WRAP will result in job cuts and a scaling down of small business services as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) continues to address a £1bn budget shortfall.

A spokeswoman for Defra said last week that she could not confirm if the changes would result in job cuts, a reduction in the number of services offered, or a fall in the overall budget for WRAP and the six other bodies.

But Trewin Restorick, chief executive of green advisory charity Global Action Plan, predicted that support for small businesses could be curtailed as a result of the changes.

"WRAP is all about physical waste and resource efficiency rather than the wider remit that Envirowise had," he observed. "The remit will inevitably narrow into what WRAP does now."

He added that WRAP had less experience supporting small businesses than the agencies that now faced the axe and as a result much of the support offered by Envirowise and others could disappear. "The direction of travel [from the government] is clear," he warned, arguing that dedicated support services for small businesses had been steadily scaled back for much of the past two years.