Maria Miller visited the SETsquared hub at Basing View to meet some of the entrepreneurs participating in the business incubation programme, which helps to support and develop high-tech start-up businesses. The Entrepreneurship Training Programme was highly commended by the Government at the Enterprising Britain Awards in November last year, and Maria took the opportunity to congratulate them on the award.

SETsquared, which is a long standing partnership between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Surrey, has been ranked the top university business incubator in the world by the University Business Incubator Index Global.

Maria met local entrepreneurs, including Alex Cowan CEO of Razorsecure, a cyber security company, which has had support from SETsquared to help grow the business. Razorsecure was recently named a Websummit “Alpha Start-Up”, only one of a handful in the world selected for this prestigious progamme.

Maria said: “I was glad to meet some of the entrepreneurs based at the SETsqared hub here in Basingstoke and hear from them how this important business support programme is helping grow. I look forward to hearing about their future successes.”

“Basingstoke is one of the top ten centres of employment in the South East and has a particular strength in high-tech industries, so it makes perfect sense for SETsquared to have located this important technology centre here at Basing View.”