ENTREPRENEURS of York-shire are top of the flops - but £25 million worth of help is at hand.

Latest figures show that when it comes to business creation Yorkshire and Humberside is a woeful ninth out of the nine UK regions.

The Treasury's latest business activity table shows the Yorkshire region with a mere 293 VAT-registered businesses per 10,000 resident adult population. That compares with 486 in London, 402 in the South-East and 384 in the East.

The region's poor business drive has been noticed by Chancellor Gordon Brown, who with Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt and Education and Skills Secretary Estelle Morris, has set out a package of measures designed to tackle the productivity gap.

The £25 million boost for Yorkshire and Humberside consists of Regional Venture Capital Funds which should make it easier for firms to obtain funding from private investors.

Initially the new Regional Venture Capital Fund managers will target firms seeking investment of up to £250,000. The first funds are expected to be awarded within the next two to six months and all should be operating by next April.

The Chancellor said: "If the levels of entrepreneurship and business activity in Yorkshire and Humberside were to match the South East this would mean an extra 45,000 businesses - with more jobs and more wealth creation for the entire community.

"Having put stability into the economy and employment we must now tackle our productivity gap and create in Britain a true enterprise culture where the chance to start and succeed in business is open to all."

Mr Brown's announcement, part of £80 million backing by the Treasury and the European Investment Fund, includes measures to -

- Sharpen incentives for enterprise with further cuts in capital gains tax and improvements to the taxation of share options

- Strengthen competition with reforms to the competition regime

- Create a better tax environment for small firms, with a review of payroll services and improvements to VAT

- Modernise the laws on bankruptcy and insolvency and

- Deepen the enterprise culture - with more work on enterprise in education.