Do you feel that all 'small' businesses get lumped into the category of SME and the terms small business and SME are thrown around by the media and government without a clear indication of their actual meaning. In fact, while the government talks about helping the UK's SMEs, it is in fact micro-enterprises (under 10 employees) that make up 95% of the UK's enterprises and a third of all UK employment. As almost all start ups are micro businesses any government assistance to new businesses clearly needs to be directed to these micro enterprises.

With SMEs accounting for 99.9% of enterprises it becomes clear that this term is fairly useless to reflect a certain type of enterprise, and when the government talks about helping SMEs it is by no means clear whether micro enterprises will benefit and in a great many cases they probably do not. Because of the power and influence of large corporations compared to micro businesses it's no surprise that achieving equality in regulations is so difficult.

There's been a lot of talk about crowdfunding and in particular the website, Crowdcube, which is the world's first equity-based crowdfunding community dedicated to business investment. A second business has now successfully raised capital using this website.

Personal Development Bureau, which helps unemployed ex-forces personnel into work, has gained £25,000 through 68 investors who contributed between £10 and £3,300. In return the company gave away 15% equity. It's hoped the funds will help the Personal Development Bureau help thousands of people find employment.

As part of the government's review into how it delivers business improvement and support services a number of changes were announced earlier in the year. Although the Business Link website, the government's online resource for business, will remain and continue to provide businesses with access to information, support and government services, included in the changes was the closure of the regional Business Link advisory service in November 2011.

Much of the information on regionally branded Business Link websites has been moved to the national Business Link website, and improvements to this site have been implemented or planned. These include the Contracts Finder, which is available now, and an improved experience for those starting up in business.

As if times aren't hard enough for start up businesses, we now hear that the UK's small businesses are paying up to three times as much for goods and services than big businesses who enjoy large savings from their favoured suppliers. Research by Huddlebuy.co.uk has shown that small businesses are paying £3.6 billion more which, for start ups, equates to £1,200 per employee. With so many SMEs struggling this is clearly an unfair cost that actually threatens the idea of an enterprise led economic recovery.