The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) have funded the Business Link service since 2000. The budget allocations for this have been as follows:
£ million 2000-01 138 2001-02 141 2002-03 147 2003-04 139 2004-05 140 2005-06 140 2006-07 140 Source: The Small Business Service Agency Annual Accounts and Reports.
Since April 2005, contracts for the delivery of Business Link services have been managed by the RDAs and provided by contracted organisations including chambers of commerce, private sector businesses and other non-departmental public sector bodies.
The aforementioned budgets represent only a portion of the total available to the service contractors. The total budget and expenditure by individual organisations can only be determined by the organisations themselves and I would encourage the hon. Member to approach them directly with this question.
It is worth noting that the budgets from the DTI are made available to the RDAs through their ‘single pot’ of money and are distributed in accordance with their regional economic strategies.