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Rachel Reeves has appointed Alex Depledge, a champion of female start-ups, as the UK Treasury’s first entrepreneurship adviser, as the chancellor tries to improve her government’s relationship with high-growth companies.
Depledge, who has set up a number of businesses including the architectural tech company Resi, will work two days a week at the Treasury, helping to develop policies to boost start-ups ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Reeves’ allies admit that while the Treasury has well-established contacts with big companies, the City of London and trade bodies, it needs to improve its links with the country’s smaller but fast-growing businesses.
Depledge has also spoken about the need to find new sources of funding to help companies scale up, telling the Financial Times last year that this was particularly a problem for female entrepreneurs.
“Funding is the only thing that matters,” Depledge said. “Women don’t struggle to start a business, they struggle to grow. We are not protecting the one part of the UK economy that has green shoots.”
A lack of access to finance is one of the key issues being considered by Reeves ahead of her Mansion House speech in the City of London next month and in her Budget later in the year.
The Treasury said Depledge would look at “the key barriers faced by businesses seeking to start up or scale up in the UK”.
Depledge told the FT last year that women often run businesses in sectors that do not naturally attract big investment from private equity and venture capital.
She introduced Reeves ahead of her speech to Labour’s party conference last September, saying the chancellor was a “wrecking ball” to the glass ceiling after becoming the first woman to hold the role.
Reeves said on Wednesday: “We have a long list of successful start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses across the UK — with the greatest density of scale-ups among the seven major industrial countries in the G7.
“Having Alex on the team will bring invaluable expertise.” Reeves’ allies said Depledge would be a point of contact in the Treasury for entrepreneurs.
The Bradford-born entrepreneur said she would be taking up a role that represented “a groundbreaking move that puts high-growth businesses at the heart of economic thinking”.
