Federation of Small Businesses

Week 6 of 2008 Thursday 7 February 2008

In this week’s issue: LEZ; capital gains tax; red tape; crime conference; small businesses and the economy in 2008; family business; show business; Scottish Budget.

1. Low emission zone hits hauliers travelling into London

The Sunday Times called it “Ken’s CO2 tax robbery” and enlisted the services of floppy-haired TV heartthrob Nigel Havers in a stinging attack on the rising Congestion Charge for large cars. The paper mentioned the FSB in the process. The FSB itself, as a (ahem!) responsible and serious business organisation, has been a bit more temperate in its language on the subject, highlighting instead the impact of another scheme that will hit business owners: the Low Emission Zone (LEZ), which came into effect this week. The LEZ affects large vans and lorries (official info here: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/lez/default.aspx) and the FSB has been arguing that many small businesses did not know about it in advance and are now facing huge up-front costs to replace or convert vehicles to comply with the scheme. After some stinging attacking of its own, the FSB did get Transport for London to introduce a period of leniency whereby drivers of vehicles that don’t meet the emissions standard get warning letters instead of immediate fines.

2. Letter of loathe

The Weekly Brief is this week indebted to a certain A Hemming of Pontypridd, who wrote a letter to the Sunday Times bemoaning planned increases in capital gains tax for everybody other than small businesses and entrepreneurs. Mercifully, the letter-writer’s miserable tones found time to mention the FSB’s successful campaign for an entrepreneurs’ relief. The FSB is not above bemoaning things in miserable tones itself (always justifiably of course!), but on this issue we won the day so everything’s just peaches.

3. Red tape anguish

The FSB’s influential campaign on red tape – the one about what small business owners could do with an extra seven hours a week – got a mention in The Independent this week. If by some extraordinary coincidence you haven’t heard about it, here’s the place to go: http://www.fsb.org.uk/data/default.asp?id=0&referrer=%2Fpolicy%2Fdefault%2Easp.

4. Crime conference

This isn’t a collection of crime bosses with raspy voices sitting round a table arguing about whose next on the hit list. Quite the opposite, it’s about taking down the bad guys. Specifically, the annual Action Against Business Crime Conference will take place on Thursday 6 March 2008 – woohoo! The focus of the event this year is raising standards and reducing crime and is an excellent networking opportunity for retailers and businesses involved in partnerships to tackle business crime. Book online here: www.businesscrime.org.uk/events.

5. Keeping it in the family

The BBC is making a programme about the issue of succession in family firms – i.e. passing on your pride and joy to the fresh-faced fruit of your loins. To discuss taking part, please contact Philip McCreery on 020 7438 1835 or email family@twofour.co.uk.

6. Transformers

This is not an invite to a film remake of some dystopian 1980s cartoon. It’s an invite to take part in another reality TV show, this time about businesses hoping to transform the way they work. The contact details for this one are as follows: 020 7434 6835 or companies@tigressproductions.co.uk.

7. Small business bonus!

We finish this week with some refreshing news from Scotland in the form of the devolved area’s Budget, announced on Thursday. Within said Budget, the Small Business Bonus (SBB) will remove the burden of business rates for 120,000 small businesses in Scotland with a rateable value below £8,000. A further 30,000 businesses with a rateable value between £8,000 and £15,000 will receive either 25% or 50% relief. The scheme (which the English scheme is based on) will be five times more generous. FSB Scotland was the only business organisation to call for an extension to the scheme ahead of the Scottish Parliament election in May 2007. The two main changes in the Budget will mean that the SBB comes in over two years (rather than three), and the Scottish Government will move straight to year two, meaning all businesses with a rateable value of less than £15,000 will pay less in business rates from this April. This was exactly what the FSB had called for in a letter to the Finance Secretary a fortnight ago. So, the FSB won the argument to increase the previous scheme to make it more generous and managed to get it speeded up. A big Weekly Brief well done to Andy Willox, FSB Scottish Policy Convener, and his team. Again, peaches!