East Midlands businesses reveal Budget wish-list

What do East Midlands business owners want from this afternoon’s Budget? We spoke to a panel of business owners across the region to compile a wish-list before George Osborne’s announcement later today.

Alistair Campbell, Company Check: “The Budget needs to offer some respite to small business concerns about recruitment, as it’s by far their biggest issue for the year ahead. Firms are growing, research shows us this, but unless The Chancellor acts to ease the impact of the apprenticeship levy and the imminent National Living Wage, industry could suffer. Reforming our bloated tax system or accepting he got it wrong on plans to cut dividends would be two good places he could start.”

Jonathon Seddon, NG Chartered Surveyors: “In an ideal world, I would like to see a copper bottomed guarantee that developers could build speculatively without fear of the property finding its way onto the Rating List. There’s no sensible reason to tax a new building until it’s being meaningfully utilised by an occupier; at which point, levying business rates could be fully justified. If there was a relaxation of the current position it would massively assist the construction industry, a sector of the economy that generates significant jobs and tax revenues.”

Scott Knowles, East Midlands Chamber: “Ministers have, for a long time, talked a good game on reforming business rates, but we now need to see some real action.

“The current regime is anti-growth. It does not incentivise or encourage investment or expansion.

“Any new system of business rates needs to be fair and equitable to all businesses, irrespective of their size, location or sector. The focus should be on resetting the valuation, collection, and setting of the rates, rather than changing only who gets to keep and spend the revenue.”

Chris Jones, Harris Lamb: “A large part of the working population is struggling to get on the housing ladder so we’d really like to see continued promotion and support for home ownership – particularly shared ownership which enables entry level access to quality housing.”

“In addition, we need more support for affordable rented homes to address the issue of large parts of the population which are totally excluded from homeownership in many locations in the country.

“I’d also like to see careful consideration to the current approach to sheltered housing for the older population . Many new projects are being shelved by many Housing Associations and councils due to changes to housing allowances, which is going to cause a major shortage further down the line, and support is the only way to prevent that happening.”

Gary Digva, Space Data Centres: “There is a cult of entrepreneurship in this country as a result of hit TV programmes such as Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice. Whilst they do paint business with a rather glorified brush, it can’t be bad to have a generation of young people wanting to start their own businesses and make their own mark in the world.

“However, I often wonder how they feel when the reality hits. Consumer and economic confidence aside, I’m not sure they will be quite so prepared for the sheer volumes of red tape. Of late, this seems to increase with every Budget and I can’t recall every being very inspired as a small business owner.

“Perhaps now is the time to recognise the importance of small businesses and crucially, to provide the support they need, especially at the start-up and growth phase. Stop drowning growing businesses in red tape and give us the freedom to thrive. The next generation of entrepreneurs in particular will thank him for it.”

Ed Vernon, Macildowie: ““The Chancellor needs to step up regional investment into the East Midlands, with a particular focus on infrastructural development to underpin long term growth across the region. I would also like to see incentives to improve collaboration between the region’s businesses and universities to drive development of new products and services especially those with international potential.

“I’d like to see a crack down on tax loopholes for larger businesses who often merely displace jobs yet provide little or no support to the region’s health, education and infrastructure systems upon which they depend. This creates an unfair basis for competition with those businesses who do play fair.”