The national model for quality-assured business support

The National Business Support Alliance is national because it brings England’s local and combined authorities into one shared, quality-assured approach — built from local delivery upward, not handed down. It’s an open structure: authorities join first, with government, steering groups and other membership bodies able to join as it grows.

Led by SFEDI and the National Enterprise Network, the Alliance sets the Business Support Standard, co-develops and reviews the regulated qualification (Ofqual recognition in progress) that underpins it, and backs it with professional accreditation, a verified national register and ongoing CPD — delivered through ALM and a network of founding centres.

Business support shapes livelihoods — whether someone remortgages a house, hires their first employee, or keeps the doors open another winter. Yet unlike every other profession with consequences, it’s had no shared standard, no accreditation built on it, and no register where any of it can be checked. The result is the quality lottery every review of the sector keeps finding: pockets of excellence next to cold spots, and no way to tell them apart. The Alliance closes that gap — and turns “delivered by accredited advisers” from a claim in a bid into a commitment you can stand behind and verify.