Starting a business
Useful resources to help you are start or develop a new business
COBRA
COBRA is for anyone who is thinking of starting up - or currently running - a small business.
The site hosts new business ideas, practical information on running a business, sources of support and finance, and a legal library covering laws and regulations affecting small businesses. Detailed UK market synopses cover key trends and future developments across more than 60 market sectors.
You will need a library membership number to access this resource.
HMRC - Starting your own business e-learning course
Have you just started in business and become self-employed? Got a lot of questions about Income Tax, National Insurance, business records and expenses? If so, this e-learning course is for you.
It explains and guides you through everything you need to know to get started. There are some useful tips from others who have been where you might be now - just starting out and needing some help.
You can work through the course at your own pace. It takes on average between one and two hours to complete, but you don't need to do it all in one go - you can dip in and out as often as you like. You do not need to be a library member to use this resource.
All of our libraries have free public computers, free WiFi and internet access. The Central Library also has a large quiet study/work space.
Two free guides for small businesses from Nominet
To help set out clearly and simply why any business needs to be online we have created a short guide, Why Get Online.
We have also created a guide that contains a step by step approach to getting your business online and growing online.
We ahave printed versions we can mail to be distributed across the library network, and we can top you up as stock depletes. Contact neil.dagger@nominet.uk for printed copies. If you are ordering on behalf of a library service, consider channelling your requests through a single contact point.
Nominet provides cyber security solutions to government helping hundreds of thousands of businesses get online and grow online. We are a public benefit company putting all our surplus profit back into charitable causes and are the UK’s largest social tech funder. Our stated mission is to positively impact the lives of 1 million people by 2020.
