On 26 June the Department for Business and Trade published a progress update on its SME Digital Adoption Taskforce, with a stated aim of making UK small firms the most digitally capable and AI confident in the G7 by 2035. That is a long way off and easy to ignore. But buried in it are two things worth an owner’s attention: free digital support for small businesses that already exists and almost nobody uses, and a run of deadlines that will force the change on you regardless.
What digital support for small businesses is available right now
The headline piece is the Business Growth Service, live since last year. It is meant to be one front door to advice that used to be scattered across a dozen schemes. Behind it sit 41 Growth Hubs across England, each with advisers you can talk to for free. They report helping over a million and a half businesses last year. Most owners I speak to have never been near one.
Alongside that there is Help to Grow, Made Smarter for manufacturers, on-demand digital skills courses through the Business Academy, and a steady run of free webinars via Enterprise Nation. None of it costs anything. The catch is that this is signposting and skills, not someone rewiring how your business runs. It tells you there is a better way. It does not sit in your office and change how your quotes turn into invoices. That gap, between knowing and doing, is the same one that leaves firms paying for five tools that never connect.
If you are in Wales, note the national pilots are running in Leeds and the West of England, not here. The route for Welsh firms is Business Wales rather than the DBT programme.
What is still just talk
Worth being straight about this. The Taskforce made ten recommendations. The one asking for a named minister accountable for digital adoption has not happened; it has been pushed to the next reshuffle. A review of whether government should help fund the software itself, through vouchers or subsidy, is under way with nothing decided. And an AI-powered diagnostic that gives you tailored advice is being built into the Business Growth Service, but it is not there yet.
So do not wait for a grant that may never arrive or a tool that is still in discovery. The useful part is the free advice that exists today.
The deadlines that will move you anyway
Here is the part that matters most. Making Tax Digital is phasing in through 2028. The UK e-invoicing mandate for VAT-registered firms lands in April 2029. Both force the same thing: getting your records and invoices out of Word, spreadsheets and inboxes and into connected software. That is not a policy ambition. It is a dated requirement, and the firms that move early save hours long before the deadline bites.
If you want a clear read on where your admin actually runs today, and which of the tools you already pay for could do more, the free audit at free Digital Maturity Audit takes about ten minutes.
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