East Midlands Development Agency has designed a Business Support Strategy for the region.

The strategy, called Encouraging Business Success, has been developed after extensive consultation with businesses.

It aims to make support easy to access, in line with the Government's Business Support Simplification Programme.

Objectives of the new strategy include providing entrepreneurs with advice to start up their own schemes and helping business opportunities.

Mike Carr, emda's executive director of business services said: "In the current climate, the ability to provide effective and easy-to-access support to the region's business is more important than ever. That is why we have been working hard both to reduce the number of business support services and to ensure that what is offered to businesses is very high quality."

To download a copy of the new Business Support Strategy go to www.emda.org.uk/businesssupport.