Andy Davies
Rae Jones
Becky Pawley
The challenge: A fragmented support system
The UK’s business support landscape has long been fragmented and hard for businesses to navigate. Annual research consistently shows that many small businesses struggle to find the right help or trust what they find. Uptake has dropped sharply due to complexity and low awareness. Government programmes span short‑term initiatives delivered by different departments, limiting coordination. Structural boundaries including funding models, data systems and policy cycles deepen this fragmentation.
The consequences are significant: missed opportunities for joined‑up working and the absence of a coherent national offer. Yet the potential is clear: SMEs that do receive structured support demonstrate productivity gains of 22% compared to similar businesses that receive none.
To meet this challenge, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is designing the Business Growth Service. This is a single, trusted national entry point that helps businesses find the right support. Delivering this vision requires new ways of working that cut across organisational boundaries. We need approaches grounded in evidence and shaped around the needs of the businesses this system is meant to serve.
In June 2025, DBT created a Co-Lab to support this work.
What is a Co-Lab?
A Co‑Lab is a design‑led, multidisciplinary team that tackles complex problems in a user‑centred way. DBT’s Co‑Lab is made up of a service designer, a policy designer and a user researcher. We have different skills but share a common ethos: pragmatism, adaptability, and a “just enough” approach that keeps momentum while grounding decisions in evidence. The Co-Lab acts as a bridge across disciplines, testing ideas rapidly and modelling the iterative, cross-cutting practice required to turn a complex landscape into a coherent national offer.
Co-Labs, sometimes known as Policy Labs, have been used across government for over a decade to make policy and services more user-centred, collaborative and effective.
Working in this way helps us learn from each other and challenge assumptions. We draw on methods and tools commonly used in digital and creative environments, while working alongside policy colleagues who bring deep knowledge of the areas we are shaping.
Ross Gower – Head of Design
‘Setting up and leading DBT's first Co-Lab has been incredibly rewarding. Over my years in government, I’ve seen the idea of policy co-labs take hold. It’s a testament to how much the User Centred Design (UCD) profession has matured that we are now working directly with policy teams and the users of our services. It has also been heartening to see just how keenly our policy colleagues have embraced this culture and as a result we have all learned so much more together.’
Applying the Co-Lab to a national challenge
For our first enquiry, we explored how local business support could be integrated effectively into the Business Growth Service. This is particularly complex at a time when many local authorities in England are navigating devolution and changes to funding.
We set out to capture the current state of England’s 41 Growth Hubs, which act as local access points for business support.
To do this, we:
- examined operational models
- identified a representative sample for deeper exploration
- conducted in‑depth interviews with Growth Hub leaders
- ran workshops with central government stakeholders
- carried out desk research to learn from years’ worth of reporting
This helped us build a clear picture of the strengths of local delivery, the barriers to consistency, and the opportunities to bring national and local support closer together.
Turning insight into action
Using collaborative design methods, we worked with policy and local delivery colleagues to co‑develop actionable recommendations. Through focused facilitation and successive rounds of feedback, we shaped these insights into a coherent package. We then brought colleagues together for a full day to stress‑test the recommendations and map how they could translate into deliverable workstreams.
Liam Askins – Head of Local Business Support
‘We need more creative-minded policy makers to challenge existing structures and ways of working. Too often we think in programme silos. I've really enjoyed how the Co-Lab has brought teams together and created space to reflect and make change collectively. They've helped us digest challenging questions in an empowering and exciting way. The Co-Lab's engagement with local partners has helped inform our approach to local delivery through Growth Hubs.’
Impact so far
Our recommendations have moved beyond lines in a document. They are now driving real, tangible change. They are influencing funding terms, data‑sharing agreements and delivery requirements for outsourced services. We are helping to bring clarity to the roles of several standalone services within a coherent national offer. Throughout, we’ve taken a systems‑level perspective, recognising that for the Business Growth Service to work well, every part needs to work together.
John Thompson – Deputy Director, SME Strategy and Business Growth Service
‘Working with the Co-Lab has pushed my thinking and challenged my assumptions and really helped me understand what businesses actually experience. When policy, design, data and technology work side-by-side, we get better decisions and better outcomes for businesses.’
Reflections on the Co-Lab model
In our first 6 months as a Co‑Lab, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to collaborate effectively in a complex, multi‑directorate environment.
As a brand‑new team working in a new way for our department, we encountered growing pains. People weren’t always sure what to expect from us or how we fit with their teams. Collaborating across directorates while trying to work in the open has meant keeping twice as many people informed as in a typical delivery project.
Navigating this complexity while defining our identity as a team pushed us to sharpen our ways of working. We also seek candid advice about how to keep our work relevant to the department’s goals.
Despite the challenges, working as a Co‑Lab has been personally and professionally transformative for each of us. It has stretched us in ways that feel energising rather than overwhelming and given us space to think and operate more strategically. We’ve embraced complexity, and it has pushed us to combine our strengths in new ways.
Next steps
Policy teams across the department have become increasingly familiar with working alongside us, and we’re beginning to see real confidence in what the Co‑Lab can offer.
Our focus now is to deepen those relationships, work as transparently as we can, and refine our ways of working. We will extend the impact of this approach as teams across DBT bring the Business Growth Service to life.
Strengthening the Business Growth Service is a national priority. Clearer support helps businesses grow, boosts local economies, and ensures public money works harder for communities across the country.
If this work resonates with you....
If you have experience in a Policy Lab, Co‑Lab or any collaborative, design‑led policy space, we’d love to hear from you. This is a new way of working for our department, and your reflections can help shape how we grow this practice.
We’re hoping to join or build a community of practice across government, so we can learn from each other, share what works (and what doesn’t), and strengthen this approach together. If this resonates with you, please get in touch in the comments.
1 comment
Comment by Dug Falby posted on
This is fantastic. So great for the dept. To set its own frame by connecting these three disciplines:-) Really excited to see where you take this, and is it a model that could help other teams?