Business Renewal
Back the firms that
hold towns together.
A high street is small firms: the cafe, the garage, the family shop. When they close, the town hollows out. Most of what squeezes them is not the market being cruel. It is policy that can be changed. Pick a pressure and see it.
See it
Understand it
A small firm does not choose the tax on its premises, the price of its energy, whether big customers pay on time, or how easily it can borrow. Those are set by policy and by rules that could be enforced. Business rates are charged on property before a penny of profit and fall hardest on the high street. Energy costs among the highest for industry in Europe hit the smallest users worst. Late payment by large customers is widespread and rarely penalised. And bank lending to small firms has thinned.
None of this is the natural order of things, and none of it is the fault of the people running these firms. Each is a lever the state already holds. Pulling them is how you keep the businesses that give a town its life.
Fix it
Reform business rates
Revalue more often, lighten the load on bricks-and-mortar premises, and level the field with large online sellers so the high street is not taxed out.
The trade-off
Rates raise over £25bn a year, so relief for one group has to be balanced elsewhere.
Enforce late payment
Automatic statutory interest and real penalties for large firms that pay small suppliers late, so cash owed actually arrives.
The trade-off
Needs an enforcement body with teeth, and large firms will resist tighter terms.
Cut the cost of energy
Bring down industrial and small-business energy costs, the deeper fix that runs through much of what ails British firms.
The trade-off
Requires energy policy that lowers the underlying wholesale price, not short-term relief alone.
Sources & method
- Federation of Small Businesses · late payment: the scale of late payment and its link to closures.
- House of Commons Library · Business rates: how the property tax works and what it raises.
- British Business Bank: on the small-business finance gap.
Headline figures are indicative and drawn from the bodies above. In the live build each pressure becomes a fully sourced note with current figures. For the prototype the numbers are illustrative.