A BBC investigation has confirmed what many UK small business owners have been saying for a long time now – the measures to prevent late payment are simply not working. In 2008 the government established the Prompt Payment Code in order to ensure that small businesses get the money they are entitled to, often owed…
Last week there was some great news that supports the opinion that the UK economy is finally rebounding. Data released by ONS (the Office of National Statistics) shows that there are now more businesses in the UK than at any time since they changed the way it was calculated back in 2007. Image: City A.M.…
It seems that sunny summer days of July were not only good news for our suntans in the UK, but they also meant a very decent spell for the High Street too. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said that sales were up by 2.2% on July 2012, fuelled mainly by the rush to buy summer…
Perhaps giving some merit to the saying “95% of statistics are made up”, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have today revised their economic figures for the first quarter of 2012. You may remember that this was thought to be the second consecutive period of contraction and so it was officially considered another recession. This…
Perhaps you will be surprised by this news item – tax evasion in the UK is now at the lowest level in five years. Despite tax evasion being a constant ‘go to’ topic for the news channels, the worst is apparently already behind us in terms of companies trying to pull one over on the…
An overwhelming 93% of the firms recently surveyed by the Confederation of British Industry group Pearson said that they knew best about the training needs of their staff and the skills that they require. They would like to take more control of training, as in recent years it has become increasingly outside of their control…
If you own a small or micro business in the UK, a new Government initiative wants to you to adopt electronic invoicing as part of your business practices. After excellent results experimenting with e-Invoicing in a number of local authorities and NHS trusts, the Government plans to roll out electronic invoicing across the board for…
Even though there was some good news for the economy today with an increase in the amount of employment growth and a marginal decline in unemployment that suggests that the downturn at the beginning of 2013 may have just been a blip, there is increasing evidence that people who are currently in work are accepting…
Worrying news for anyone in the UK as two influential think tanks believe that austerity will be still be a big issue, not just for the elections in 2015, but all the way through until 2020. The Chancellor originally said he would be able to balance the budget within four years, but that figure has…
After a revision of figures for April and a smaller than expected gain in May, economists are speculating that the recovery of the US market is starting to slow. The private sector employment increase in April was revised down from 119,000 to 113,000 and in May US businesses added 135,000 new jobs which was some…
