The Business Action
Council (BCA) will provide well-evidenced advice and suggest policies to the
government to address the concerns of businesses from every industry and sector
The UK’s economy has been heading in a downward spiral ever since the coronavirus outbreak swept across the nation. However, business organisations are now taking matters into their own hands in hopes to stabilise the country’s economy and prevent it from crumbling. The UK’s leading entrepreneurship organisations have united to establish the Business Action Council (BCA) to address the concerns of businesses in an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The BAC will help meet the needs of over 500,000 businesses across every sector and region in the UK unite for the first time in such a grand scale of collective action. This comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged business organisations to collaborate and pick up the pieces of UK’s dwindling economy. The BAC will provide the government with well-evidenced advice and policy proposals to meet the demands of a wide range of businesses, and also to build resilience and restore confidence in businesses by having their needs addressed. Its founding members include large organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Institute of Directors (IoD), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), and the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
The Council brings together leaders from the most significant institutions that represent the UK’s business community, and the BCA will comprise of six specialist working groups developing high-quality proposals and analysis to guide the government’s response to the pandemic. The working groups are “Future of Finance”, “Employee Retention”, “Peer support”, “SME Tax”, “Supporting High Growth Start-Ups” and “Real Estate Reform”.
BAC member Maurice Ostro OBE, Chair of the BAC and Chair of the YPO UK Leadership Council, said: “A national crisis requires a national & collaborative response. It is inspiring to see our business community rally together, creating an action-focused group to support the Prime Minister’s call for consensus.”
“It is a historic moment to see organisations that sometimes see each other as competitors put aside differences and unite in the national interest,” Lord Bilimoria, Vice President of the CBI, who is also a BCA member, said. “There are no simple answers to the myriad problems that the pandemic has created: entrepreneurship organisations will need to work together over the coming months to develop the bold and imaginative solutions necessary to help us recover as quickly as possible.”
BCA member Irene Graham OBE, CEO of ScaleUp Institute, added: “For a secure and sustainable national recovery to take effect innovative solutions will be needed to enable local economies, across the UK, to thrive and for businesses from all sectors and diverse backgrounds to scale up and grow. The ScaleUp Institute is pleased to play our part in the Business Action Council. Collaboration at all levels, and across all parts of the UK’s entrepreneurial community, has never been more important.”
It is promising to see business organisations taking matters into their own hands and providing innovative solutions, allowing businesses to thrive and prosper during this difficult time and bring the UK’s economy back on its feet.
