The New Forest Business Boost programme

Business Boost is a dedicated, bespoke and free programme from New Forest District Council, delivered by the University of Portsmouth.

It is specifically created for businesses to improve productivity and support their business resilience and growth.  

Thanks to funding from the government's UK Shared Prosperity Fund, there is no cost to participating businesses, except a commitment to attend 4 face-to-face learning sessions, over the 2 months of the programme. 

Business Boost will provide key support to your business, directly improving your productivity and resilience, leading to growth.

The programme will also help prepare businesses for successful applications to other funded programmes. 

Business Boost will give you access to: 

• a high intensity lecture/workshop programme following a key topic/subject theme. 
• peer workshops to discuss aspects of the content relevant to the peer group and see how your business peers are seeking to action insights from the course 
• business mentoring to make the content precisely relevant to your individual business context and to work on specific business issues, leading to: 
• a personal action plan to make immediate positive improvements to your business 

What you will learn 

Business Boost will focus on the subject of 'Business Growth and Resilience', covering the following elements:  

• identifying ways to grow your business 
• identifying strategies to make your business resilient 
• understanding how your resources can be leveraged for business growth 
• consider how resources can be used to make your business more resilient 
• understanding how you can finance your business for growth 
• consider how Marketing can help your business grow 
• combining Finance and Marketing for growth 
• how to source finance 
• using social media to grow your business 
• resilient business models 
• using sustainability for growth 
• combining resilience and sustainability 
• increasing resilience for growth 
• creating strategies for sustainability 

The University of Portsmouth's industry-practitioners will deliver the subjects through a combination of workshop sessions and one-to-one mentoring.  

Programme dates 

There are two locations to attend the programme: 

Please note participating businesses must commit to attend each of the sessions over the two months of your selected cohort. 

After eligibility checks and approval is given, participants will be allocated to a relevant cohort. 

How to apply 

Businesses wishing to take part should register their interest a form on the University of Portsmouth website.

For more information and the registration form visit: https://sites.google.com/port.ac.uk/business-boost-new-forest/home

Additional information 

See how we collect and processes your personal data in relation to the Business Boost Programme. 

This New Forest District Council initiative is funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government's Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025.  The fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills.