British Business Bank Sponsorship & Policy Adviser

There are 5.6m smaller businesses in the UK, accounting for 99.9% of the UK private sector business population and employing 16.3m people. The Business Finance team’s mission is to transform the UK economy and protect taxpayers by helping good businesses thrive – while also supporting big Government priorities such as net zero and levelling up.

The BBB supports around £41 billion of finance to 1.5 million companies, working alongside over 180 delivery partners. It supports a range of finance including debt and equity, and has programmes which specialise in regional growth, backing start-ups, and investing in the UK’s high-growth businesses, as well as managing multi-billion Covid support schemes on behalf of the Government.

This role involves:

• Working with the BBB to provide the department with assurance that the BBB is an accountable, high-performing organisation, delivering value for money and supporting DBT to achieve its objectives. To deliver this, you will need to work effectively with departmental colleagues, BBB, HM Treasury and UK Government Investments to secure Ministerial agreement for BBBs purpose, objectives and KPIs, and ensure that BBB has the necessary approvals and funding to enable this.
• You will be required to lead and/or support policy development as required in response to HMG's ambitions for BBB and small business access to finance. You will develop recommendations for Ministers on complex issues; advising them on how to minimise financial risk and fraud loss whilst managing interrelated legal, regulatory and reputational risks.
• DBT policy leads for variants of the ENABLE programme, that aims to increase the availability of development finance for SME’s. You will be responsible for working with the Ministry of BBB, HMT, MHCLG, and other stakeholders to refine policy, consider the scope, or potential growth of the scheme and ensure it continues to respond to the needs of the markets; recommending policy changes and transactions for Ministers.
• Deliver a high-quality Secretariat function for senior-level and Ministerial cross-government meetings; Ministerial/parliamentary briefings and correspondence; evidence for committees; and other enquiries such as FOI requests relevant to the team’s policy area.
• Becoming the expert in your policy areas; to lead and develop your policies so that they can respond and adapt to changing economic conditions to deliver the new government’s ambitions.
• Provide high-quality briefings, submissions and performance reporting for Ministers, senior officials and OGDs; to support decision-making on your policy area.
• Leading on scrutiny and challenge of your policy areas; including creating multi-disciplinary virtual teams, that can challenge and develop policy through analysis, legal and commercial as required.
• Manage and lead through our partners to make sure our policy and governance processes are effective and support delivering HMG’s objectives.
• You will develop a detailed understanding of access to finance for businesses starting up and growing, the role played by lenders and its interaction with HMG so that you can navigate and deliver government objectives. You will be dealing with the senior executives in the private sector, along with SCS in Whitehall, and ensuring they are briefed to have the right conversations.