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As Enterprise UK Ambassadors, Dan and I were lucky enough to be invited to a small business reception last week at Number 10. The event was a celebration of Britain’s small business success – in pioneering solutions to today’s challenges and contributing to helping the UK out of recession.

The evening was hosted by Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and attended by Sir Alan Sugar along with 100 other successful businessmen and women. It was great to represent Britain's young entrepreneurs at an event celebrating the success of small businesses. The theme 'Building Britain's Future' resonated particularly with us given our commitment to mitigating climate change as well as providing jobs and contributing towards sustainable growth.

At the reception I cornered Sir Alan for a quick chat about what the government is doing to support small businesses to grow sustainably and take the lead in helping to mitigate climate change. Not much it seems, at least nothing that Sir Alan knew about.

I think this is a huge gap – we have the Energy Saving Trust for individuals, the Carbon Trust for big businesses and a gaping hole where support for SMEs should stand.

Encouragingly though, small businesses aren’t letting the lack of government support stop them – in fact a number of business owners at the event were focussed on directly mitigating climate change. One of these was Liftshare founder Ali Clabburn, another Enterprise UK Ambassador. Ali has set up a hugely successful car-sharing scheme which takes cars off the road, improves air quality and helps to mitigate climate change.

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