Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Small businesses will spend £23bn this year on making premises Covid safe, according to research by financial services provider Hitachi Capital.
Office risk assessments, signs, sanitising products, professional cleaning and air filtering systems are forecast to cost every UK small business about £4,850 each on average this year, the equivalent of just under £23bn in total.
Hitachi Capital surveyed 1,500 small businesses for its survey.
Fixed premises will cost on average £5,443 this year to be Covid safe
Outdoor on onsite businesses cost on average £5,446 to be Covid safe
Businesses offering home working expect to spend on average £3,660
Small business that is completely working remotely (20 per cent of those surveyed) will have the smallest Covid-secure costs, with 68 per cent not spending anything on disease control and 21 per cent spending less than £1,000 per company.
>See also: Covid debt drowning small businesses to the tune of £104bn
Losing money to keep Covid safe
Meanwhile, one third of small businesses are losing money by sacrificing customer numbers to keep Covid safe, according to a separate Iwoca survey.
A quarter of small businesses are experiencing fewer sales because of coronavirus social distancing, the survey found. Four out of 10 small businesses