Good news for Small Businesses
Reading Time: 2 minutesYou could hear the outward sigh of relief from small business owners as the Queen’s speech focused on the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill. Finally and rightly so, the government is shifting its focus onto small businesses.
The purpose of the Bill is to build a stronger economy by supporting small businesses as they compete, and ensure they aren’t disadvantaged by those that don’t play by the rules.
The main elements of the Bill are to:
- make it easier for small businesses to access finance; improve payment practices between small businesses and their customers; provide small firms with fair access to the £230 billion spent each year in the form of public procurement contracts and increase the availability and sources of finance for businesses that want to invest
- ensure that the red tape that affects small businesses is frequently reviewed to ensure regulations are either cut or remain effective, and to place that requirement into law
- strengthen the reputation of the UK as a trusted and fair place to do business, by increasing transparency around who owns and controls UK companies with a register of beneficial ownership, strengthen rules on director disqualifications and remove unnecessary costs from insolvency law
- strengthen UK employment law by tackling National Minimum Wage abuses and cracking down on abuse in zero hours contracts
- make it easier for small businesses to expand overseas
- bring fairness to the sole traders and small businesses that run 20,000 or so tied pubs across England and Wales, with a new Statutory Code and independent Adjudicator to ensure that publicans who are tied to a pub owning company are treated fairly
- make some childcare regulations more flexible to meet the needs of working families
- stop highly paid public sector employees keeping redundancy payments when they come back to the same part of the public sector within a short period of time
At Bennett Griffin we offer advice to small to medium sized businesses on start-ups, partnership agreements, company law and employment law.
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