Angels in the City initiative

Dear Mr Gavigan,

INFORMATION REQUEST

The City of London (CoL) acknowledges receipt of your request for information of 27 October 2011.

The CoL aims to respond to all requests within 20 working days beginning from the first working day after it has received a request.

Please note that the CoL is the local and police authority for the “Square Mile”, ie the historic City of London, and not for London as a whole. Please see the following link to a map on the CoL's website, which shows the area covered:
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/maps....
The CoL’s port health authority functions extend beyond the City boundary. For further information please see: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/porthealth.

Please note also that the Freedom of Information Act applies to the CoL as a local authority, police authority and port health authority. Subject to any other statutory provisions requiring the CoL to disclose information, release of information outside the scope of the Act is subject to the discretion of the CoL.

Yours sincerely,

Information Officer
City of London
Tel: 020-7332 1209
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Gavigan,

 

INFORMATION REQUEST

 

Following your request of 27 October 2011, and our acknowledgement of the
same date, the City of London Corporation (CoL) responds as follows.

 

Please note that the CoL is not an ordinary authority in that it has
private and charitable functions as well as public ones. As a result, the
work of the CoL is met from one of three funding sources which it
controls. One is the City Fund (a public, tax-based fund); another is
City’s Cash (an historic, private fund that makes no calls on the public
purse); and the other is charities funding. Only our City Fund activities,
i.e. our tax-funded functions, as a local authority, police authority and
port health authority, fall within scope of the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA). Please see the FOIA, Schedule 1, Part II, paragraph 9. Disclosure
of any other information not falling on the public purse is at our
discretion (subject to any other statutory provisions requiring the CoL to
disclose information). For further information about the CoL's private and
public funds please see the CoL's website at
[1]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/finance.

 

The CoL pays for the Angels in the City initiative out of its private
funds, i.e. at no expense to the taxpayer, and therefore the information
you have requested is out of scope of the FOIA.

 

Nevertheless, the CoL provides the following information.

 

The Angels in the City initiative forms part of the CoL’s longstanding
commitment to support small businesses and entrepreneurship both within
the City and our neighbouring boroughs. Through Angels in the City we hope
to make a contribution to helping the growth of businesses within the Tech
City cluster specifically. The Angels in the City scheme is a partnership
project between the CoL and London Business Angels. The pitching events
delivered as part of the Angels in the City initiative are free of charge
to the businesses pitching.

 

The CoL has previously worked with London Business Angels, for instance on
providing a contribution to their Creative Business Accelerator programme
in 2006/07. We approached London Business Angels as a recognised expert in
the field with a request to devise a programme to recruit, train and
support business angels from the City, with a view to increasing angel
investment into small businesses in the City’s neighbouring boroughs.

 

The CoL’s Standing Orders governing the appointment of professional
consultants for contracts with a value of less than £50,000 state that
the number of consultants to be invited is at the discretion of Officers.
On the basis that the proposal by London Business Angels was of high
quality and demonstrated good value for money, no open tender process took
place.

London Business Angels’ own expertise informed the design of the project.
We did not consider other organisations to deliver Angels in the City for
us including the three you mention in your information request nor did we
consider delivering the project without a third party organisation.

It is likely that the element of Angels in the City involving businesses
pitching for angel investment will involve some form of joint working with
agencies within the Tech City area working with entrepreneurs. This could
involve, for example, the Tech City Investment Organisation or Technology
Strategy Board and other locally based organisations. 

In shaping our idea for Angels in the City we consulted organisations
working with entrepreneurs such as Capital Enterprise, the membership body
for deliverers of enterprise support in London.

The CoL’s Policy and Resources Committee approved the proposal to fund
London Business Angels to deliver the project. No members of that
Committee have pre-existing relationships with London Business Angels, the
Angel Capital Group or any of the people involved with those companies.

The budget for the Angels in the City project is £49,900 and covers costs
associated with the following:

 

o Design and production of project branding, marketing materials, flyers
and other collateral and associated set-up costs;
o Delivery of 5 awareness raising workshops to potential business
angels;
o Delivery of 10 follow-up workshop sessions to potential business
angels on specific aspects of angel investing and the Tech City
opportunities;
o Support for catering costs for a launch event attended by 100 people;
o Costs of hosting, catering and other relevant costs of the 15 workshop
events;

o Organisation and delivery of presentation events for 45 small
businesses to pitch to investors;
o Preparation of selected businesses for pitching through training and
investment readiness advice
o Delivery of follow-up support to investor/entrepreneur links and track
of outcomes.

Substantial staff time of both CoL Officers and of the team at London
Business Angels will support the delivery of the above. No other companies
are involved in the delivery of Angels in the City.

Prospective angels will be self-selecting, but will undertake a range of
training and capacity-building support to include but not be limited to:

·         the angel market and on opportunities and returns, including
details of research statistics; 

·         the tax benefits of angel investing, notably the opportunities
under the new 30% tax break through the Enterprise Investment Scheme, plus
Entrepreneurs' Relief from Capital Gains Tax, Enterprise Management
Incentives (EMI options) etc;

·         legal issues related to the angel investment process;

·         what to look for in making an angel deal, including experience
from existing angel investors and case studies of recent investments;

·         the investment opportunities in the City fringes including case
studies of successful businesses.

London Business Angels will lead the training and preparation of angels
and the selection, training and preparation of entrepreneurs. Angels are
to a large extent self-selecting. London Business Angels will work in
partnership with organisations such as the Tech City Investment
Organisation and other, locally-based organisations in the ‘Tech City’
area and the City fringes more broadly, to identify entrepreneurs looking
to pitch for investment.

 

Neither potential angels nor entrepreneurs seeking to raise funding from
new angels will be required to register with London Business Angels in
order to participate in the Angels in the City initiative.

As part of their work outside the Angels in the City initiative, London
Business Angels operates and supports a network of 100 High Net Worth
Business Angels. They have been doing this for the past 30 years. London
Business Angels provides a programme of training for investment readiness
and preparation for a selected group of 42 businesses from the 1,000
applications it receives each year, including the opportunity for 6
businesses to present at one of the seven six-weekly meetings of the angel
investor members held each year. This is followed by a programme of
facilitation and support to build the relationship with the investors and
syndicate members. A charge is made to enter this programme. The level of
this charge is dependent on the stage of the project to a maximum of
£750, with a much smaller charge for very early stage projects. As
mentioned above, these charges do not apply to businesses pitching for
investment through Angels in the City. Furthermore, as mentioned above,
the City Corporation’s support for Angels in the City is met from our
private funds.

 

The CoL routinely acknowledges the role of delivery partners for
initiatives such as this through inclusion of their logos, alongside ours,
on publicity materials.

To answer your question about quantifiable objectives, through Angels in
the City, which will run until March 2013, we anticipate up to 125 new
business angels being recruited and envisage up to 45 small businesses
based in the City’s immediately neighbouring boroughs, principally in the
‘Tech City’ cluster benefiting from angel investment.

 

The targets above are aspirational and are the main criteria for success.

 

Further information on our work to support small businesses is set out on
our website at [2]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/businesssupport

 

We hope that this is of assistance.

 

If you wish to make a complaint about the way the CoL has managed your
enquiry, please make your complaint in writing to email address:
[3][email address].

 

The FOIA applies to the CoL as a local authority, police authority and
port health authority. Subject to any other statutory provisions requiring
the City of London to disclose information, release of information outside
the scope of the Act is subject to the discretion of the CoL.

 

The CoL holds the copyright in this communication. Its supply does not
give a right to re-use in a way that would infringe that copyright, for
example, by making copies, publishing and issuing copies to the public or
to any other person. Brief extracts of any of the material may be
reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 (sections 29 and 30) for the purposes of research for
non-commercial purposes, private study, criticism, review and news
reporting, subject to an acknowledgement of the copyright owner.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Economic Development Office

City of London Corporation

T: 020 7332 3600

[4]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

 

 

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