Lollipop Local

At the launch of their Growth Manifesto, the Federation for Small Businesses have called upon the Government to make provision in the Budget for stability to allow small businesses to grow.

With public sector cuts taking effect left, right and centre, the UK’s five million small businesses are ideally placed to provide new avenues of employment for those who suddenly find themselves without a job.

The FSB is calling upon the Government to help small businesses with less than four members of staff to take on up to three additional employees by extending the National Insurance holiday for one year. This would allow each new staff member to contribute an additional £6000 to the Treasury through employee National Insurance and income tax.

One in ten small businesses have said that they would need to make staff cutbacks if the Government continues with its plans to increase fuel duty from 1 April 2011. The FSB are asking that this strategy be replaced by a fuel duty stabiliser that will help to control inflation if the problems in the Middle East cause oil prices to rise even further.

And the area which is of particular interest to me – rising youth unemployment should be tackled by helping micro-businesses like myself financially so that they can take on an apprentice or take advantage of the Graduate Internship Scheme which ends this month. Extending the latter would save £1.5 million in benefits payments and the former could create an additional 5000 job opportunities for young people.

The FSB are also asking that employment legislation remain unchanged over the next year so that small firms can take on new staff without fear of future financial liabilities.

Having seen first-hand the damage caused to the emotional psyche and potential work ethic of a generation of teenagers encouraged to stay in bed and draw Jobseekers Allowance, rather than seek out an apprenticeship or trainee programme to flesh out their CV, these last two points are crucial.

I am at a stage in my business where I need an assistant, someone that I can train up. But I can’t afford a full-time employee as yet. To be able to call upon an enthusiastic trainee for a growing number of hours per week with a view to them becoming full-time at some point in the future – when they would effectively be paying for themselves in terms of additional income being made possible.

Maybe I’m being naive in a ‘business’ way but, for me, it would be seem to be the ideal and logical solution.

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Tags: small-business-growth

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 11:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.