By Jennifer Thomas
Development Manager
Federation of Small Businesses
AS they start out in 2018, businesses need support to invest and grow so that we ensure our truly innovative nation of entrepreneurs and risk takers are inspired to greater things.
At the end of last year, the FSB called upon the Chancellor to deliver a budget that helped achieve those aims and, overall, it was a business-friendly Budget.
The Chancellor’s vision for an inclusive economy included a set of measures that will boost confidence across the small business community as they face extremely challenging trading conditions.
Government, in its attempt to re-align tax revenues, increase minimum wages and extend pension contributions, has hit the small business community very hard and with more and more incentives to take risks being removed. Government needs to get to grips with the seemingly endless stream of increased cost pressures being imposed on SME businesses, the very businesses that it is looking towards to drive and build the UK’s future economy.
One and a half million modest-earning small firms and the self-employed will be relieved that we have seen off a VAT tax grab that would have caused huge economic damage. Instead, FSB is ready to work with the Treasury to simplify an over-complicated tax that on average takes a business a whole week to administer every year.
We welcome the careful approach to protect diesel van drivers while at the same time addressing air quality. We also welcome the fuel duty freeze, which is vital to so many local and rural Northamptonshire businesses for customers, suppliers and staff.
FSB presented a series of reforms to the Chancellor to make the business rates system fit for the future, and we are delighted to see many being taken on board to improve a tax that so badly undermines economic growth. We are particularly proud to see the elimination of the staircase tax, a victory that FSB has campaigned hard to secure over the last few months.
Now, The Chancellor, The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union must collectively deliver an agenda that ensures that SME businesses are encouraged to fully engage with the UK’s Industrial Strategy and as we approach ‘full employment’, that the business community has access to the skills and workforce that they need to invest in and grow their businesses.
Following the release of the Industrial Stratey White Paper at the end of last year, we agree with the ambition to set clear ‘grand challenges’ for the UK economy and will be working with Government to ensure small businesses play their part in initiatives such as the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and the Small Business Research Initiative.
However, this is only the first piece of the productivity jigsaw. To have a sustained and game-changing impact on the economy, the focus needs to be on how to improve productivity across the UK’s 5.5m small businesses and the self-employed. We are keen to take part in the announced review into improving the productivity and growth of small and medium-sized firms.
The East Midlands is bucking the national trend with surging growth in manufacturing and export and has emerged as the UK’s most confident region for the fourth quarter running in the latest Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Small Business Index (SBI) standing at +30 in Q3 2017, 29 points above the UK average (+1).
However, the economic outlook remains extremely troubled, with high costs of doing business and inflationary pressures hitting confidence and deteriorating productivity and growth. New public sector headline investment will help, to scale-up the British Business Bank by two thirds as well as in research and development, local infrastructure, SME house-building, broadband and training.
To find out more about how to access a range of free business support by joining FSB, go to www.fsb.org.uk or contact
