16 Jun 2026

London Tech Week 2026: Government unveils new scale-up support package

This year’s London Tech Week delivered a number of headline-grabbing announcements across AI adoption, infrastructure and investment. One that may have flown slightly under the radar, but that nevertheless deserves close attention, is the government's announcement of a new package of support measures for scale-ups and high-growth firms.

techUK welcomes these new measures, which are grouped around four key areas:

Concierge service: This service has the explicit remit to ensure that government support for scale-ups is effectively streamlined and integrated. It intends to provide “new, agile, and rapid support” for firms that are ready to scale and grow “exponentially”. The service will be run out of the Department for Business and Trade’s scale-up directorate but work across government to connect scale-ups in Industrial Strategy’s eight priority sectors to the appropriate government department, agency or regulator required to address their most urgent barriers to growth. Due to the highly tailored support, the concierge service is expected to target dozens, rather than hundreds, of scale-up firms.

Scale-up Pipeline: While the new concierge service will support companies that are already scaling, the government is, in parallel, rolling out a new service to support firms that are not yet scaling but have the potential to become scale-ups soon. To achieve this, the government will launch a new scale-up pipeline, “a highly selective programme designed to test an intensive delivery model for accelerating a cohort(s) of the UK’s highest-growth potential scale-ups.” Compared to the concierge service, this pipeline will support a broader set of companies, selecting and nurturing several hundred firms that are poised to begin a period of rapid scaling. To deliver the pipeline programme, the government has announced a tender for a private sector partner to build and pilot the programme.

Global Talent Taskforce: The Global Talent Taskforce is also being strengthened, with new schemes on offer including the option for visa fee reimbursement for scale-ups in the digital and technology, life sciences, and clean energy sectors and an Office for Investment-led fast-track referral scheme for the UK Expansion Worker sponsor licence, “helping high-potential international businesses set up in the UK more quickly”.

Scale-up Advisor: The Department for Business and Trade also announced the appointment of entrepreneur Penny Verbe to serve an initial six-month term as the Secretary of State’s Scale-up Advisor “to help ensure that the UK’s most innovative businesses can scale, stay and thrive”.

techUK supports this new package of measures, including the dedicated scale-up concierge service – something that we have long called for on behalf of our members, including in our 2025 Scale-up Action Plan.

Although last week’s announcement is certainly encouraging, it is worth noting that scale-ups require a holistic package of support in order to thrive. Access to finance, agile regulation and public procurement opportunities are other key levers that government must deploy to enable high-growth technology companies to scale and stay in the UK. On techUK’s Scale-up Hub, we list a series of further steps that government could take forwards to tackle other parts of the scale-up challenge, including negotiating access to the Scaleup Europe Fund and expanding the use of advanced market commitments in government procurement to provide greater certainty to innovative scale-ups.

Scale-ups are the fuel in the engine of the UK's SME economy, accounting for £1.45 trillion of business output in 2024. Scale-ups are also more productive that other firms in the same sector, and are highly innovative, with nine out of ten scale-ups having introduced or improved a product, service, or process in the last three years. Last week’s package includes the kind of targeted, proactive measures that fast-growing firms require in order to continue to scale and grow and we look forward to working with the government to develop these measures further and implement them.

techUK Deputy CEO Antony Walker said:

“techUK welcomes this new package of measures to support scale-up companies. We are delighted to see recommendations that we have previously called for—notably a concierge service for scale-ups, as set out in last year’s techUK Scale-Up Action Plan—turned into concrete actions.

This package is a step in the right direction and a sign of the government’s commitment to supporting tech companies to scale and stay in the UK.”