One of 11 bills being presented to Parliament this year includes the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment bill. This is the first time ever that a bill has specifically referenced small firms, so that sounds like good news for a start.
The idea of the bill is that by supporting smaller companies to compete we can build a stronger economy. Likely to be ratified in March 2015 nothing’s going to change just yet and the detail of the bill is still patchy.
Finding out exactly what’s being included has taken a bit of digging but here are the areas most likely to have an impact on your business:
- Payment terms of big business:The big one I’ve been waiting for is the regulation for large companies to pay small businesses on time. The government plan to make them publish their payment practices, so that those not playing fair can be held to account. This lacks teeth to me – I can’t really see this having a huge effect, and I guess the earliest we’d start to see this happen is a couple of years from now. I think we need a change in culture that gets the large companies really understanding just what the impact is of them paying us on 90 days and more.
- HMRC will continue to crack down on anti-avoidance and will have new powers to enforce payments of tax in these cases. There is a mention of the “avoidance or minimising of national insurance” so I do hope this doesn’t mean they’re going to be looking at how we pay ourselves as directors using dividends, you may remember this was on the agenda before the crash.
- Making it easier for small businesses to access finance and increase the availability and sources of finance for businesses who want to invest – don’t know exactly what this means yet, but watch this space.
- A plan to speed up cheque clearing so that an electronic image of a cheque will be acceptable tender.
- They plan to provide small firms with fair access to the £230 billion spent each year on public procurement contracts.
- A Small Business Appeals Champions is going to be appointed to check that red tape regulations work for the smallest firms, and that new regulations are reviewed every 5 years.
- There will be practical financial help from the UK Export Finance Department to make it easier for small firms to export.
- Companies who don’t pay employment tribunal awards will now be fined, and those who abuse minimum wages will be tackled. Exclusivity clauses in zero hour contracts will be banned so employees can work for more than one business.
- The Annual Return is getting a makeover, to hopefully make life easier for small companies.
- A corporate ownership bill will mean that rogue directors can be disqualified for longer and compensation awarded to victims.
There do genuinely seem to be measures here that will actually help the small business. How much impact they’ll have, we’ll only know in time. I’ll keep you posted as more detail emerges on anything likely to affect you.