Get Britain Trading – the new year kicks off with a bang

24 January 2012

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Just three weeks into 2012 and we've been busy representing Forum members across all sorts of business areas as part of our campaign to Get Britain Trading. Read on to find out how we're helping small businesses across the UK.

Get Britain Trading

The Get Britain Trading campaign continues to go from strength to strength, but we still need business owners' support. If you've yet to join the campaign, sign the pledge and help us to campaign for improved business conditions for small firms.

HMRC harassment and mistreatment of small firms

HMRC appears to be using new late penalty rules as a cash-generation exercise and several Forum members have been caught out by this new practice. We have written to David Gawke, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, to complain about HMRC deliberately waiting months before alerting businesses that have filed their tax returns a couple of days late so that fines stack up.

A court appeal challenging the practice could result in HMRC having to pay back small firms that have been fined. In the meantime, we're warning business owners to keep a close check on their tax payments.

Warning over plans to ditch work experience

The Department for Education is looking at plans to remove the requirement for GCSE pupils to undertake two weeks' work experience.

We've submitted evidence from our training and skills member panel, which shows that school pupils are leaving education without basic IT, time-keeping and health and safety skills. Rather than scrapping work experience, we believe that it should be improved to ensure pupils leave school prepared for the world of work.

Campaigning against Royal Mail price rises

We've written to Ofcom calling on the regulator to consider small businesses when deciding on Royal Mail reform. Under new proposals, prices of second class stamps could be increased from 36p to 55p and Royal Mail could be given the power to make no-limit increases for the price of a first class stamp until 2018.

Our recent ‘cost of doing business' research found that 97% of small firms have seen business costs rise over the past year and massive increase in postal costs could mean some businesses are hit hard.

Standing up for publicans

We've been representing the views of pub owners and specifically those that have been taken advantage of by some of the big pub companies. Last year we gave evidence at two All Party Parliamentary ‘Save the Pub' group meetings and, in January, we've been renewing our calls for a statutory code of practice and adjudicator to prevent pub companies exploiting landlords, including providing alternatives to ‘tied contracts' which force publicans to pay steep rents and buy tied products at hugely inflated prices.

Lobbying in Scotland

We've recently been stepping up our lobbying work in Scotland and in January met with a series of Members of the Scottish Parliament as well as John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth. We've been raising issues facing our members based in Scotland and discussing concerns of the newly established Scotland member panel.

Help us to lobby the Government

Could you spare five minutes every six months to feed your views directly into the Government?

We're looking for members to join our member panels. It won't take up much time but will help us to make a real difference to small businesses. Join a member panel here.