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ACT welcomes Government's new product safety laws

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Beyond the discount: Restoring integrity to the cycle supply chain

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The Association of Cycle Traders believes the time has come for greater accountability throughout our supply chain, writes ACT Director Jonathan Harrison in an article published for BikeBiz.
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9 Jun 2025

Retailers on Britain's high streets are being encouraged to put themselves forward for the first-ever Love Your High Street Awards, designed to celebrate the small businesses that bring... Read more…

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6 Jun 2025

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16 May 2025

ACT parent company Bira has said that members are hopeful the warm weather, Easter weekend and upcoming bank holidays will provide a much-needed boost to high street sales.
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UK economy delivers strongest quarterly performance in a year despite forecasts of business downturn.
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Communities come together for Local Bike Shop Day 2025 celebrations

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ACT parent company Bira welcomes Bank of England's latest interest rate cut

8 May 2025

ACT parent company Bira has welcomed the Bank of England's decision to reduce interest rates from 4.5% to 4.25%, calling it a "much-needed boost" for the retail sector, including for cycling... Read more…

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Help to Grow Scheme due to launch in October - register your interest now

Posted on in Business News, Cycles News

BEISSalisbury high street have reached out to IRC orgs, including the ACT, to seek help getting the message across to SMEs to register interest in the scheme.

Help to Grow: Digital is a new UK-wide scheme to help up to 100,000 UK SMEs over three years to adopt digital technologies that are proven to increase firm-level productivity.   ​​

The Chancellor announced Help to Grow: Digital at Budget 2021 on 3 March and the scheme will be launched in autumn 2021. ​​

Help to Grow: Digital will offer free impartial advice and guidance via an online platform to help SMEs identify their digital technology needs, assess technology purchasing options and implement new technologies in their operations.​​

Help to Grow: Digital will also offer SMEs a voucher covering up to half of the costs of preapproved, new-to-firm digital technology solutions up to a maximum of £5,000. ​​

The voucher will be available to UK businesses with between 5 and 249 employees that have been trading for more than 12 months. ​​

The voucher will initially provide financial discounts to SMEs for digital customer relationship management, accountancy and e-commerce solutions.​​

 

Vision for Help to Grow: Digital

Tackling part of UK productivity gap by driving successful SME take up of productivity enhancing software

Creating opportunities for SMEs that have already adopted technology during Covid 19 to go further in their digital journey

Providing a slick customer experience that brings a fragmented technology market into one place

Improving the adoption rate of technology from the current ca. 50%.

 

Objectives for Help to Grow: Digital

  1. Provide Value for Money and measurable impact
  2. Tackle SME financial barriers to tech adoption
  3. Tackle SME information barriers to tech adoption
  4. Make it easy for SMEs to access advise and support
  5. Support and incentivise the existing digital technology market to better work for SMEs

 

For more information or to register your interest, please visit helptogrow.campaign.gov.uk/.

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