The new office will act as a gateway for SMEs into UK defence.

The UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) new hub for small firms, recently renamed the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, will launch in January 2026.

Once launched, the office aims to increase the number of opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while making contracting processes simpler, less onerous and faster, Harrison Talbot-Brown the MoD Deputy Director of Industry Collaboration & Strategic Supplier Management told DSEI Gateway during an SME session at DSEI UK 2025 on 9 September.

The office is a key effort supporting the MoD’s ambition to increase defence spend with SMEs by GBP2.5 billion by May 2028, as announced in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy 2025, he added.

Since the office was announced in March, the UK MoD has engaged with industry bodies, trade associations, and MoD stakeholders to shape its development prior to launch. This process is now concluding, Talbot-Brown said.

Sharing insights from this process, he noted that SMEs highlighted familiar challenges in defence procurement, including significant barriers to entry and historically low SME spending.

Investors, meanwhile, pointed to concerns that defence is not widely seen as a high-confidence growth sector, while past political messaging around defence investment has often been inconsistent.

To address this, the new office aims to do the following:

• Help prime suppliers provide a more consistent support experience for SMEs within their supply chains.
• Provide better access to opportunities for SMEs through equality of information and market engagement.
• Improve advice and support to SMEs on export matters
• Better cohere UK defence sector supplier development and scale up support across government, trade associations, and prime suppliers.
• Support SMEs to gain access to finance and growth capital.

SMEs, he concluded, should come forward and speak with him and his team to help shape the final stages of the office ahead of its launch.