Sirius is a Registered Enterprise Agency, giving free business support, and delivering business loans to the Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire Area. Sirius is a private/public funded not-for-profit organisation, originally established by BP, whose objective was the creation of long term sustainable jobs through the provision of soft loans and advice to start-up and growing businesses.

Sirius was established by BP Chemicals Limited in 1999 to create new jobs in the Hull area to replace the 300 jobs lost when their Saltend site was restructured. The original aim for Sirius was to recreate over a three-year period, those jobs lost at the site through the provision of soft loans to start-up ventures from a £1 million fund. The target of 300 new jobs was achieved well ahead of time and Sirius has gone on to help create thousands jobs in the Hull and Holderness area through the provision of soft loans, business guidance and advice.

Since 1999 Sirius has financially assisted approx. 420 businesses which has helped create approx. 1950 jobs. In addition to that number, Sirius has also assisted approximately 300 further individuals or businesses per year with free, qualified, advice and support to either start-up or grow their businesses. That's over 6900 self-employed or businesses!

Sirius, over the last 20 years has loaned over £3,619,000 to new and existing businesses to help with starting up and expansion. From this we have levered over £11,263,000 of traditional funding. Over the period a conservative estimate is that Sirius has helped well over 13,000 local people to set up a business, grow or expand their business, or become self-employed. An accurate count of the jobs created is anyone's guess, but a low estimate would be over 16,000. At Sirius, there has been over 13,500 people helped on a one-to¬ one basis and over 400 workshops. All with no financial assistance whatsoever from either of our local authorities! Sponsors are always welcome however, and currently Sirius is supported by The One Point and IT@Spectrum.

The staff and its board of directors are committed to Sirius’s long term future and continue to work actively to attract both public and private sector funds to ensure Sirius on-going support for new and growing businesses.