Today is Small Business Saturday

Today is Small Business Saturday 

From corner shops to cafes, small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the heart of local communities across the country. Small Business Saturday is our chance to celebrate the incredible work they do – from stepping up to support local communities throughout the pandemic, creating local jobs, giving life to our high streets, and helping us make a full economic recovery from the pandemic. 

After the difficult past two years because of the pandemic, we encourage everyone to shop local and support the small businesses in their area in these crucial months of winter trading. 

Conservatives are helping businesses build back better from the pandemic by: 
  • Supporting businesses with tax cuts, reforms and incentives to invest, helping to drive our economic recovery. We are cutting business rates by at least 50 per cent next year for 90 per cent of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, and freezing all rates. Combined with Small Business Rates Relief, this is a business tax cut worth £7 billion for over 700,000 eligible businesses – the biggest business rates cut in 30 years. 
  • Launching two new Help to Grow schemes, to boost the productivity of small businesses: Our Help to Grow Management Scheme will help SMEs get world-class management training through government-funded programmes delivered through business schools, with businesses contributing only £750, just 10 per cent of the overall cost of the course. 
  • Our Help to Grow Digital Scheme will level up the digital skills of our small businesses with a voucher entitling them to 50 per cent off the purchase of new productivity-enhancing software, up to a total of £5,000 each. 
  • Launching our Plan for Jobs, helping businesses get the high skilled employees they need. Our Plan for Jobs includes our £2 billion Kickstart Scheme which is creating paid placements for over 100,000 young people; our Job Entry Targeted Support scheme which provides six months of personalised support for people who have been unable to find work; and our new £2.9 billion Restart scheme will provide 12 months of tailored support for those out of work. 

Our record on supporting businesses: 

  • Providing £407 billion of support for families, jobs, and businesses, more than almost any other country in the world – supporting more than 14.5 million jobs and providing over £100 billion in business grants and loans. 
  • Protecting almost 12 million workers with almost £70 billion of government support, through our Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Throughput the pandemic, we took historic steps to pay people’s wages when it was not safe to go to work – this support reached almost 12 million workers and allowed business owners to retain and support their staff. 
  • Helping to create 1.1 million more businesses since 2010, boosting our economy. In 2010 there were 4.5 million businesses in the private sector across the UK, in 2021 this has increased to 5.6 million business – an increase of 24 per cent. 
  • Injecting over £800 million of funding to help modernise over 50 high streets and town centres, helping local, small business thrive. The Prime Minister has expanded the Future High Streets Fund, confirming that another 57 towns in England will be given a share of £1 billion to redevelop their high streets, improve transport and access into town centres and convert empty retail units into new homes and places of work, taking the total receiving support to 100 places. 
  • Awarding over £600 million in Start Up Loans to support entrepreneurs and small businesses create jobs and boost economic growth. Start Up Loans provide funding to entrepreneurs who may otherwise struggle to access it. Since the scheme’s creation in 2012, 75,000 loans have been awarded, providing more than £623 million. We have committed to extending the Start-Up Loan programme to the end of 2021-22, supporting up to 10,000 more entrepreneurs across the UK.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more