The national framework for quality-assured business support
The National Business Support Alliance brings the country’s local and national stakeholders into one shared approach. A single Business Support Standard, regulated qualifications, professional accreditation and a verified national register, so everyone who funds, employs or receives business support can be sure who’s qualified to give it.
A sector coming together, not a single owner.
Led by SFEDI and the National Enterprise Network, the Alliance brings the UK's approach to business support into one shared, quality-assured approach. Built from local delivery upward, not handed down.
We set the Business Support Standard, co-develop and review the regulated qualifications that underpin it, and back it with professional accreditation, a verified national register and ongoing CPD. Delivered through ALM and a national network of centres.
- 01
The Standard and Qualifications
The Business Support Standard is the shared benchmark the Alliance sets; the regulated qualifications are how advisers prove they meet it, rebuilt for the modern adviser with new finance and project management specialist units.
- 02
Accreditation
Professional recognition built on the standard, extended with the craft that defines a good adviser. Relationships, developmental practice, referral, enterprise context. Earned, and renewed through CPD.
- 03
The Register
A verified national register where commissioners and employers confirm an adviser’s credentials, specialisms and current standing. Launching September 2026 and pilot participants are on it first.
Business support depends on trust. The Alliance is how we build, hold, and prove it.
Business support shapes livelihoods, whether someone remortgages a house, hires their first employee, or keeps the doors open another winter, so the adviser giving the advice must be fit for purpose: competent, current, and accountable to a shared sector standard. For years SFEDI has set that standard, accredited the advisers who meet it, and maintained a directory. The Alliance builds on those foundations, convening advisers, networks, funders, commissioners and policymakers to give business support the modern professional framework other consequential professions take for granted, and to turn "delivered by accredited advisers" from a claim in a bid into a commitment you can verify and trust.
- Authorities & commissionersTake part in the pilot: put a cohort through the new qualification, test the model, and help shape the national Standard before it is formally reviewed and set.
- AdvisersRecognition that travels between contracts and employers. Qualify, accredit, join the register.
- PolicyA national approach built from local delivery upward. Open to government and partner bodies as it grows.
Join the first cohorts
Ahead of the official September launch, a first group of combined and local authorities are being invited to put cohorts of advisers through the new qualification and accreditation, by the levy-funded apprenticeship route delivered with ALM. The cohorts test the delivery model, prove the new qualification in practice, and help shape the updated national Standard before it is formally set.
Taking part now means your advisers are among the first on the register when it launches, and your authority helps decide what the national Standard becomes.
Founding membership of the Alliance opens with the full launch later in 2026. Pilot authorities are the first invited.