Monthly Archives: December 2019

Hot Business News Today

SME owners have pumped £12k of their own cash into their businesses

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Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Entrepreneurs have put almost £12,000 (£11,846.45) of their own money into their businesses on average, according to new research.
Worryingly, 2.6m business owners admit to having concerns about the future – a quarter even believe that their business will go under in the next five years.
These findings come from Business Rewired, a report by Xero looking at the greatest concerns for SME owners in the future. The most prominent worries are:

Receiving payments late54pc

Tax rates for small businesses44pc

Uncertainty of Brexit44pc

Value of the pound40pc

Maintaining or increasing levels of productivity31pc

Increasing cost of importing goods/materials30pc

Cyber attacks/cost of protection against them27pc

Rising cost of rent25pc

Attracting high calibre employees24pc

Cost of running a green/sustainable business23pc

Failure to meet demand23pc

Retaining staff21pc

Increasing cost of exporting products19pc

Inflexible employee contracts19pc

Cost of staff recruitment19pc

Staff going on annual leave17pc

Pressures like these have affected the mental health of more than a third of respondents, with small business owners working an extra nine hours per week on average on top of their standard working hours.
Optimism in the industry
Despite a dismal year for SMEs, experts believe that the emergence of AI will ease the strain on exhausted business owners.
Gerd Leonhard, business futurist and contributor to the report, says:
“Automation is reducing the need

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Hot Business News Today

Ex-small business commissioner blames Whitehall for pushing him out

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Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Paul Uppal, the ex-small business commissioner, has blamed Whitehall for pushing him out of a role which, he says, is under-resourced and ignored by government.
Uppal, who was appointed late payment watchdog in 2016, has told The Times that his office was met with  “radio silence” from civil servants and ministers over his approach to the job and that his budget was too small to tackle the “huge task” of getting big companies to pay small businesses on time.
>See also: Small Business Commissioner Q&A: Paul Uppal talks about late payments
The former late payment tzar left in October after a disagreement over an alleged conflict of interest related to an unpaid, interim advisory role in another government-backed small business scheme.
Uppal expressed his “shock” and “hurt” at how the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy handled the issue.
Chancellor Sajid Javid said last week that a successor to Uppal would be found quickly and that the role would be given more teeth.
>See also: How to tackle late payments to your small business
Uppal says that his successor would need more financial and strategic support from government. His last face-to-face meeting with a Whitehall official was back in

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