Your weekly summary of entrepreneurship news, comment, and features. Sent by the Centre for Entrepreneurs (home of StartUp Britain). Sign up here. Read the original newsletter here.
From inmates to entrepreneurs
The prison population has more than doubled from 40,000 in the early 1990s to over 85,000 today, and reoffending rates remain stubbornly high – 46% of ex-prisoners reoffend at an estimated cost of £4.5bn per year.
In our latest report, ‘From inmates to entrepreneurs’ , we detail the appetite and propensity for entrepreneurship among prisoners and make the case for prison entrepreneurship programmes with ‘through-the-gate’ support made available to all interested pre-release prisoners.
We calculate that the large-scale introduction of such prison entrepreneurship programmes could save the government up to £1.4bn annually on the cost of ex-prisoner reoffending, at a cost of £82m – providing a 17x return on investment. To achieve this, we propose the government creates a prison entrepreneurship fund to support local programmes.
“Just imagine you are running a school, and nearly half your students, year after year, fail their final exams. When fault rates run that high in any organisation, the failure is a systemic one”.
Richard Branson, blogging about this report
Read the report
#inmatestoentrepreneurs
StartUp Tour 2016
National enterprise campaign StartUp Britain, run by the Centre for Entrepreneurs, is hitting the road again this summer to provide inspiration and free, impartial support to thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs.
Now in its fifth year, the StartUp Britain bus tour, powered by NatWest, will visit a record 30 towns and cities over six weeks.
- Check the destinations and get more information
- Entrepreneurs: Volunteer to give advice on-board in your town/city
- Entrepreneurs: Can we help road-test your startup?
- Lawyers/accountants: Join as a local sponsor
#startuptour
News
- The Queen’s Speech: The impact on UK startups (Elite Business Magazine)
- The Queen’s Speech: Reactions from the business community (CityAM)
- SMEs biggest victim of HMRC tax crackdown (Real Business)
- Record number of solvent companies liquidated in rush to beat entrepreneurs’ relief changes (Economia)
- Full network of 39 growth hubs boost business support across the country(gov.uk)
Opinion
- Uber should take its lead from Thomas Cook’s battle with Victorian Britain(Christian Hampel, PhD candidate, University of Cambridge)
- The Prince’s Trust’s 40th anniversary: How business is helping deprived young people flourish (Lloyd Dorfman, chairman, The Prince’s Trust and Doddle)
- Calling it quits: When to walk away from a struggling business (Hilary Devey, founder, Pall-Ex)
- Why Britain is beating the U.S. at financial innovation (Jeff Lynn, co-founder and CEO, Seedrs)
- Entrepreneurs shouldn’t let risk out of their control define them (Charlie Mullins, founder & CEO, Pimlico Plumbers)