Following the axing of funding to government regional offices, the Department for Business, Innnovation and Skills is to re-establish a government presence in the regions by setting up six small offices, called ‘BIS local’.

The offices will provide regional intelligence that can be filtered into policymaking. A BIS spokesman said: “It is important that BIS has a policy presence outside of Whitehall so we can communicate effectively with local enterprise partnerships, businesses and other organisations.”

He added that “the teams will support BIS’s overall objectives, particularly those relating to growth, jobs and rebalancing the economy.”

The department told CSW that the combined staffing levels of these offices will be fewer than 50 people. The locations have not been decided.

BIS used to be represented in the nine English regions through Government Regional Offices, which received much of their funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government. They were much bigger than BIS local, employing over 1,500 people, and will close in March.

The business department also launches a trade and investment white paper today, setting out plans to boost growth and help small and medium sized enterprises export more.

It calls for a ‘whole government’ approach to trade and investment and says that all government departments should align with the work of its exports champion UK Trade & Investments. There will also be a new cabinet sub-committee established under the chairmanship of the minister for trade and investment, Lord Green. “This group will provide leadership in ensuring the whole of government works toward supporting trade and investment, and in challenging policies that risk or undermine this goal,” the paper says. A “senior officials’ network will be set up to support the work of the sub-committee”.

The white paper sets out four new schemes to provide small and medium-sized business with credit to help them increase exports and compete internationally. An ‘Export Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme’ will provide businesses that turn over less than £25m a year with access to up to £1m in guaranteed lending. Under a bond support scheme, the government will share the lending risk with banks.