Bolton Twenty Years On

November 1991 was the 20th anniversary of the seminal Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms, under the Chairmanship of John Bolton. Few other reports of its kind can have had such an enduring impact on the fields of business, economics, politics and management training.

Twenty years on, we now have a Minister with responsibility for small firms; the clearing banks have specialist small firms' sections: TECs, Enterprise Agencies, Chambers of Commerce and colleges all address themselves to meeting the needs of the small business sector.

In Bolton 20 Years On, John Stanworth, Colin Gray and a team of Small Business Research Trust writers take stock of this crucial segment of the economy and outline factors that will influence the future of small-scale enterprise in the UK.