A69Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Existing-firm management and technology adoption
Existing action A69, assessed at the same scope.
Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Established small and medium-sized firms in England with 10 or more employees in sectors with low management scores, in mayoral areas running the Business Growth Service. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: England.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline: Help to Grow: Management (participants pay £750) continues; Made Smarter Adoption runs in all nine English regions (£16m in 2025–26); the Business Growth Service is the national brand. A comparison-based test of diagnostic and adoption support with a productivity outcome is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Test targeted diagnostic advice and adoption support for existing firms, with a comparator and a defined productivity outcome. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Innovation
- In the national plan: Related option, assessed separately
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Business advice evidence is mixed and foreign management trials do not provide a UK-wide productivity forecast.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Test targeted diagnostics and adoption support for a defined firm group against the existing support offer.
- Test whether it works
- Additional productivity, survival and adoption with comparison firms; separate turnover growth from productivity and examine spillovers.
- Establish the cost
- Advisers, grants, firm time, technology and evaluation, net of fees; test whether firms would have invested anyway.
- Protect against harm
- Use transparent eligibility and publish failures; avoid subsidising adoption already planned.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Existing-firm management and technology adoption: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Residual harms (Hm)2 of 3 — Manageable harm with specified safeguards
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 14.5–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 16.7–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Define firm eligibility and existing offer; cost advisers, adoption support and evaluation, including firm contributions. Measure additional productivity, survival and displacement. Proposed owners: business department, local business-support bodies and delivery partners.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending baseline verification, incremental costing and funding; not a rollout approval”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Not fully costed in this review”.
Still to cost: Define firm eligibility and existing offer; cost advisers, adoption support and evaluation, including firm contributions. Measure additional productivity, survival and displacement. Proposed owners: business department, local business-support bodies and delivery partners.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: business department, local business-support bodies and delivery partners (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (formerly DBT) with mayoral strategic authorities and Growth Hubs (action record)
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Business support is devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; Help to Grow: Management runs UK-wide. Not assessed outside England.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Mean management practices score, firms with 10 or more employees: latest 0.55 (2023); baseline 0.50 (2016) (Great Britain).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Business-advice evaluations show mixed results, with turnover effects more consistent than productivity/employment. Do not assume every AI or digital adoption subsidy works.
Sources: whatworksgrowth.org (P-GC-WWG-ADVICE-2016)
SWOT points it addresses
- Management practice scores rose only modestly (0.50 in 2016 to 0.55 in 2023), and the national management programme, Help to Grow: Management, found no statistically significant effect on firms’ productivity after 9,847 leaders took part. (Innovation)
- Spending and spin-out counts do not show economic or social returns: the flagship technology-adoption scheme found no statistically significant productivity effect, and the spin-out review offers recommendations rather than measured outcomes. (Innovation)
Review record
Assessment status: Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.