Small Business Current Issues

As well as yearly National Minimum Wage increases, small businesses are going to be the hardest hit by the introduction of the new National Living Wage. Whatever sector they operate within, small businesses often employ staff working on the National Minimum Wage, so it is not surprising that payroll costs have risen significantly in recent months and years.

• National Minimum Wage to rise again in October 2016
• The impact of the National Living Wage

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The law on workplace pensions has changed and by 2017 every employer in the UK, including charities and small businesses, must automatically enrol their employees into an auto enrolment scheme. If you have at least one member of staff auto enrolment is your legal obligation and, as an employer, you are responsible for enrolling all eligible employees into your scheme and contributing to it.

There are hundreds of thousands of smaller companies approaching their staging date and the ability of pension providers to provide solutions is becoming a real issue of capacity. It is not usually about just having a pension scheme, but having the process and systems in place to collate the data required to present and report to the Pensions Regulator.

• Free auto enrolment workshops

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The Chancellor recently announced a number of positive measures to reform business rates in the UK: Firstly, business rates have been devolved to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Secondly, there will be cuts on business rates for approximately half of all properties in England from 1 April 2017.

• Business rate changes, including worked examples

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On 23rd June 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union. From the argument over selling bendy bananas to the threat of an emergency Budget, the EU referendum campaign has undoubtedly had its share of the headlines over the past couple of months. The biggest headline now though is of course that the UK has voted to leave the EU.

• What does Brexit really mean for you?

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As small business in nearly every commercial sector start to rely more and more on technology, now might be the time to review your data protection procedures and implement appropriate changes. Recent government estimates suggest that a data breach costs SMEs an average of £310,000.

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