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The study analyzes a survey of 372 businesses operating in the East Midlands and reveals the trends of engagement with green growth, demand for green skills development and pro-environmental business support. The findings confirm major differences in how large and small businesses engage with green growth and the challenges they face. Sectorial characteristics are of significance in growth trends and confirm manufacturing companies derive more turnover from the green products when compared to services. Manufacturing companies are also more proactive than services in integrating the green growth ambitions with the business strategy. Green skills and information gaps are major obstacles to business engagement with green growth. Business support agencies are urged to broaden the scope and availability of the pro-environmental enterprise support. Policy community is advised to develop support mechanisms that reduce skills and information gaps. A transformative approach to enterprise support is advocated in order to catalyze the contribution of the business community to sustainable regional development.

In this case study, we offer an analysis of feedback from a student experience survey completed by Black undergraduate students who received proactive, targeted coaching and mentoring support during 2021–2022. All the students were studying at a large higher education institution in the United Kingdom which offers a broad range of degree courses by distance learning.

This paper reports on the intervention delivered and analyses the student experience of being offered, and receiving, proactive coaching and mentoring. It is based on the responses of 102 students who engaged with the experience survey after having self-selected to receive the intervention. What follows is an analysis of their experiences using a qualitative in vivo approach based on word frequency in students’ free-text comments.

The findings presented are that, in this intervention, students who self-select to receive coaching and mentoring support experience tangible (self-reported) behaviour changes with potentially longer term benefits for their studies. These include improved self-confidence and self-efficacy, increased proactive help-seeking behaviour, greater recognition of strengths and achievement and personal growth and self-awareness.

In presenting this case study, we aim to contribute to the growing corpus of practitioner case studies and research papers that show the benefits of coaching and mentoring in higher education and – more specifically – why coaching and mentoring can be a worthwhile targeted intervention for students from underrepresented backgrounds. This lends support to the growing consensus that students with positive, proactive help-seeking behaviours perform better than students not able to access support (Byrne et al., 2014). We conclude the case study with some practical implications for providers looking to provide targeted support to students.