Next Friday is the last day to nominate someone for the latest wave of UK honours. Twelve days after that, HM Treasury’s Budget representation portal closes. We’ve been asked to spread the word on both, so consider this the week we’re doling out homework.
On Thursday we — and some of you reading this — were on a call with the honours team at the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST). We’ve bemoaned the shortage of entrepreneurs on the list for years, and in Honours for Innovators, Anton Howes and Ned Donovan went further and proposed building a new order of chivalry from scratch — the Elizabethan Order. Short of getting that built, we’ve decided to stop complaining and help out.
The honours committees can only pick from those who are nominated, and they have some first-rate members. Driving up nominations will drive up competition, and with it the number of entrepreneurs, innovators and ecosystem builders who receive recognition.
So have a think about someone you know whose achievements merit recognition, and submit a nomination. The deadline is a week today. While you’re at it, the King’s Awards for Enterprise Young Founder category we flagged a fortnight ago closes on 8 September.
If you’d like to sit in on future meetings with the honours team, join us (for free) as a Member so we know how to contact you.
Portal Recall
We flagged the Budget representation portal three weeks ago, when John Healey — who has incidentally just joined LinkedIn in case you want to give him a follow — confirmed 28 October as the big day. The portal closes on 9 September. From conversations I’ve had over the last week, it seems founders still assume representations are something that can only be done on their behalf by trade associations. Anyone can submit, individuals included, though the Treasury asks that submissions address effectiveness and value for money, revenue implications, how the measure supports growth and wider macroeconomic effects.
Four things separate a submission that gets read from one that doesn’t. First, cost it. If you can’t produce a number, say what the number depends on and give a range. Second, pick one thing. Submissions are triaged by policy area, so a document containing six vague, unrelated ideas will be routed to nobody.
Third, match the Government’s objective where you can. This Budget has an explicit frame — moving money and power out of Westminster — and a submission that explains how your measure delivers it stands a better chance of being taken up. (Though there’s no point hammering a corporation tax cut into a devolution-shaped hole.)
Fourth, use your own firm as the evidence. You know what a policy actually did to a real company’s hiring, pricing or investment decisions. Two paragraphs of specific operational detail carry more weight than a page of citations. Say what you do, how many people you employ and where.
Submit your own representation directly to HM Treasury — and if you would like to share it with us for consideration in our submission, send it over.