We are SO excited to announce that United Parents has been accepted onto the Innovate UK Business Growth programme!
The programme is a well-known national initiative designed to help high-potential UK businesses scale through tailored support, strategic guidance, and expert-led innovation coaching.
The Innovate UK Business Growth Programme (you may know it as Innovate UK EDGE, as it used to be called) works with thousands of innovative companies across the country, helping founders accelerate commercialisation, refine their strategy, build investor readiness, and unlock new market opportunities. Being selected to join the programme is perhaps another signal of United Parents’ potential for impact in the mobility and family support sectors.
United Parents is developing a parent-to-parent carpooling solution to make school runs safer, greener, and less stressful for families, while reducing congestion and air pollution around school gates. Joining the Innovate UK programme will give us access to strategic growth advisers, personalised support, and innovation tools that will strengthen both our product development and our ability to scale.
Why we are doing what we are doing:
School-run traffic accounts for up to 40% of peak-time congestion in many UK towns and cities. These short, stop-start trips typically happen with cold engines, meaning they generate disproportionately high CO₂ and NO₂ emissions and contribute to some of the worst air-quality hotspots outside school gates. At the same time, our research shows that parents face significant stress, time pressure and financial strain trying to manage school-run logistics, especially when plans change at the last minute.
This combination of environmental impact and daily family stress makes it clear that the UK needs scalable, low-carbon, community-driven alternatives, and that’s exactly what United Parents is building.
Joining the Innovate UK Business Growth Programme marks another important milestone in our journey, following recent acceptance into the FFinc Forward Faster Accelerator in September and the Breakthrough Accelerator in October 2025. Together, these programmes reflect increasing recognition of the need — and potential — for smarter, community-led solutions to the school-run crisis.
We’re SO grateful to Innovate UK for their support and excited for what this next phase of growth will unlock!
