Following a high profile Downing Street launch and a successful tour around towns and cities in England and Wales, national enterprise campaign StartUp Britain will shortly arrive in Edinburgh on the way to helping the number of UK businesses started in 2015 to reach a record 600,000.

At the launch last month, surrounded by entrepreneurs, David Cameron announced that the target set for the government-backed Start Up Loans company three years ago of awarding 30,000 loans to entrepreneurs by 2015 has been achieved. 119 loans, worth some £662,000 have been made to individuals in the City of Edinburgh and 1,401 loans, totalling £5.363 million, to people across Scotland during this period.

For a fourth year, the campaign is touring Britain with a bus full of startup experts and champions, to provide inspiration and support to tens of thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs. As one of 28 stops across the UK, the bus will be parked in St Andrew’s Square from 10am 4pm on Monday 3rd August.

Joining leading small business software company Sage as a headline sponsor of the tour, RBS is providing its iconic 1966 Routemaster bus wrapped with campaign branding to catch the eyes of passersby on the high street and on the open road.

Government-backed Start Up Loans Company and Upwork the world leader in online work are also supporters. On board, the sponsors will be giving one-to-one advice and workshops to
aspiring and earlystage entrepreneurs, while local business support organisations such as Cre8te Incubator and Firstport Funding will provide mentoring and local guidance. The tour’s partners in Scotland include Entrepreneurial Spark, Scottish EDGE and the Association of Scottish Businesswomen; among our UKwide partners are FSB, British Chambers of Commerce and UKTI, which recently launched the First Time Exporters Initiative to provide advice and support to help companies expand into international markets.

The bus will have made stops in Birmingham’s Centenary Square, Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens and Queen Street, Cardiff on its way to Edinburgh and will go on to visit Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness on the Scottish leg of the tour.

StartUp Britain director, Matt Smith said: “Since StartUp Britain launched in 2011 we have seen record breaking numbers of people each year starting businesses, showing that the entrepreneurial spirit within Britain continues to grow.

By parking the bus in town squares across the country, we want to give people the confidence and inspiration to turn their business ideas into reality”.