The Seam Start-up Access Index

Beside the index: start-ups led 5.9% of UKRI research and innovation grant money for the 6,219 grants that started in the last two years, and 27.7% of Innovate UK’s. Of the 62 Small Business Research Initiative contracts in the same records, 26 went to start-ups.

The measures.

• Ministers' meetings. Share of the outside organisations ministers met that were start-ups or scale-ups. Each organisation at a meeting counts as one meeting with it, so a roundtable with twelve companies counts twelve times.
• Senior officials' meetings. Share of the outside organisations senior civil servants met that were start-ups or scale-ups, counted the same way, in the departments that have published their meetings every year since 2021.
• Public contracts. Share of contract awards on Find a Tender won by a start-up.
• UKRI grants. Share of UK Research and Innovation grants (Innovate UK and the research councils) led by a start-up, by the quarter the grant started; studentships left out.
• Innovate UK grants (not in the score). Share of Innovate UK grants led by a start-up, by the quarter the grant started. Shown beside the index, not in it: Innovate UK's grants are already counted in the UKRI measure.
• Government news (not in the score). Share of GOV.UK news items that mention start-ups or scale-ups. Shown beside the index, not in it: only a handful of items a quarter say those words, so it swings too much to count.

Who counts as a start-up. “Start-ups” means start-ups and scale-ups: companies under ten years old on the day of the meeting, contract or grant. Each organisation is checked against Companies House. It must be a private limited company (not a plc, charity, partnership, university or public body), not dormant, in a trading industry, and not the UK arm of an overseas firm or a new holding company over an older business. About 470 named big corporates never count, nor do investors or trade bodies, and a company stops counting once it lists on a stock market. Being owned by investors or another firm does not by itself rule a company out, but a company does not count when its recent registration does not mark a new venture: when a company registered long before controls it, or when its accounts show 200 or more staff within three years of registering. Companies the register cannot settle, many of them foreign, count when they are on a start-up list (the Future Fund, UK Research and Innovation grants, Wikidata) or a check found a start-up. This is the same test as every other start-up figure on Seam (method). Names are matched to the register by the company’s own name; a brand that is only part of a longer registered name counts only when a second check agrees, and every match is open to hand review. Companies that have since closed still count for the years they traded. It is the same test, run by the same code, as Who gets in the room, our analysis of ministers’ meetings, so the two can never disagree; every start-up figure on Seam uses it (the definition).

The sources. Ministers’ and senior officials’ meetings come from the transparency releases every department publishes. Officials’ meetings count only for the 12 departments that have published them every year since 2021, so like is compared with like. Every organisation named at a meeting counts as one meeting with that organisation, so a roundtable with twelve companies is twelve meetings, and the share is the start-ups and scale-ups among all of them. Public contracts are the awards published on Find a Tender, which began in January 2021, the reason the series starts then; a contract shared between suppliers counts once for each. UKRI grants come from UK Research and Innovation’s Gateway to Research: every grant since January 2021 by the quarter it started, counted once under the organisation that leads it, with studentships left out (they name a university and a student, not a firm). Grants are counted, not weighed by money, so a few very large awards cannot swing the share.

The index. Each measure becomes a score where 100 is its own average over the five years from July 2021 to June 2026. The headline combines the scores for ministers’ meetings, senior officials’ meetings, public contracts and UKRI grants. Public contracts count for a third of the score, because a contract is where a start-up is paid; the other three share the rest equally, 22.2% each. A quarter gets a score only once every one of them is fully in; until then the table shows what has arrived, and says what the score is waiting for. The base each share is measured against: ministers’ meetings 2.1% start-ups, senior officials’ meetings 1.3% start-ups, public contracts 10.7% start-ups and UKRI grants 17.4% start-ups.

Beside the index, not in it. Innovate UK’s grants on their own, as they are already counted inside UKRI’s. Government news that mentions start-ups, as only a handful of items a quarter say the words. And the share of grant money that start-ups lead, with the Small Business Research Initiative’s contracts, as one rolling figure: by money, a few very large grants swing it.

Timing. The quarter we are in is never scored, and a finished quarter waits until every measure is in: three months after it ends for meetings and grants, one month for contract awards. A recent quarter holding less than a quarter of its usual number of records is also treated as still arriving. Departments publish meetings about three months late and Gateway to Research adds grants for months after they start, so the latest scored quarter can still move a little as late records arrive. Anything still arriving is shown in the table, in grey, marked “still arriving, not counted yet”.

Read it with care. Start-ups are a small slice of each measure, often a few dozen records a quarter, so one busy month moves the index a long way. The table shows the counts behind every share.

Changes. 24 October 2026: senior officials’ meetings added as a measure, and the whole series recalculated with it. UKRI grants added as a measure, and the series recalculated; Innovate UK’s grants shown on their own beside it.