Catagory / SMEs

Stop late payments, save 50,000 small businesses…

This is the call from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which has found that existing policy interventions have had no discernible effect on tackling problems around the UK’s poor payment culture in the last 5 years. Small businesses report that, on average, 30 per cent of payments are typically late compared with 28 per […]

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Access to finance; Productivity; HOT SMEs and Schrodinger’s cat…

Access to finance. The British Business Bank (BBB) comes under fire for its lack lustre performance in providing effective routes to finance for SMEs.  Barry James, writing an open letter to chancellor, Philip Hammond in Real Business points out that 99% of companies are SMEs and they employ half of employed people outside government. He […]

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Construction supply chain payment charter published; it’s now time for the retail sector to follow suit and introduce their own charter for prompt payment…

  Last month the government’s Construction Leadership Council published a new payment charter for the construction supply chain. Signatories to the new Construction Supply Chain Payment Charter (CSCPC) will ensure that payments are made to their supply chain not more than 45 calendar days from the end of the calendar month in which the work […]

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Waitrose announces 7 day payment terms for SMEs…

In January 2016, the Grocery Adjudicator, Christine Tacon, hauled Tesco over the coals and ordered it to introduce significant changes to practices and systems after finding Britain’s largest supermarket seriously breached a legally-binding Groceries Supply Code of Practice (the Code). Tesco Chief Executive Dave Lewis had  earlier announced in October 2015 that smaller suppliers, who deliver up […]

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Brexit Briefs

Remain kind, remain open, remain inclusive, remain tolerant, remain together. Vote Remain…  

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The Queen’s speech – On the problem of ignored productivity…

CIPD – The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has questioned the government’s priorities on improving the UK’s productivity. Although the UK’s GDP has grown in recent years, this has been predominantly as a result of immigration increasing the size of the work force; productivity in terms of output per head has been more or […]

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Late payment – clouds gather…

Market Invoice and now cloud accounting software provider FreeAgent has joined a chorus of complaints in finding typical UK micro-businesses write off nearly £2,000 in unpaid invoices each year. With 5m micro-businesses in the UK, this equates to a total of over £9bn written off in unpaid invoices last year. Based on invoices dated between […]

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Late payment “the damaging culture for UK business”

In a wide ranging report from Market Invoice, searching through its database of 30,000 invoices over 5 years, the proportion of invoices paid late by debtors is shown to have risen steadily from 45% in 2013 to over 60% last year. This contrasts markedly in Europe (excluding the UK), which shows almost the exact opposite […]

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A closer look at the government’s reform to grants funding

A report from Business Advice and Grant Tree outlines some of the proposed changes to grant funding. Cheriton believes that grants are still a great way to fund innovation and encourage new ideas – let’s keep them…    

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Poor planning could cost SMEs £25bn

Economia reports that over a quarter of SMEs in Britain (26%) are putting their financial survival on the line by failing to follow a business plan. This is revealed in research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). Without a business plan, these firms have entered 2016 without any objectives, revenue targets or a plan […]

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