The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 43: June/July 2019 | Page 41

BUSINESSWISE
Small business commissioner urges
local businesses to engage with him
The UK’s Small Business Commissioner Paul Uppal has urged
business owners in Swindon to make use of his office and team
to help tackle the culture of late payment.
Attending an event organised by the town’s leading referral
group BusinessWise at The Workshed on Tuesday May 7,
Paul told business owners his role was to tackle the ‘long-
standing institutional problem of late payment between small
businesses (50 employees and less) and larger businesses or
corporations.
“If we can change this culture around payment, it
would boost our whole economy. In some other countries,
businesses wear their good practice around payment as a
‘badge of honour’ including in Germany and Scandanavia.”
He told business owners who attended that his team had,
in the last six months, recovered around £3.5m for small
businesses who had been kept waiting for an unreasonable
length of time by bigger businesses. He also talked about
the ‘bad practice’ of using a ‘discount incentive’ to encourage
small businesses to discount their prices in return for
prompter payment – when prompt payment should be
standard practice.
“I often tell corporations when I meet them,” Paul said.
“That the sooner they pay their supply chain, the sooner the
money comes back around to them.”
Paul, who took on the government appointee role about
16 months ago, was involved in a family construction firm
for around 20 years, he was also an MP for one term and
understands the stresses and strains of running a small
business. His office is based in Birmingham and is accessible
to small businesses nationwide.
“What small businesses need is a predictable cashflow
as owners will not grow, recruit or invest – and take on more
responsibility and often more hassle – if they cannot rely on
being paid on time,” Paul said.
One power that the Office of the Small Business
Commissioner has is to ‘name and shame’ companies which
take months to pay their bills. Recently Holland & Barrett
was named for taking an average of 68 days to pay their
suppliers – after a technology company asked for help in
getting an invoice for £15,000 settled. This bill has now been
paid. Holland & Barrett revealed that their standard payment
terms are 90 days however the supplier concerned had 30 day
terms.
Paul Uppal told the attendees this kind of issue is one his
office will try to help with and needs to know about to gather
data on the UK wide picture. He also revealed the boss of
Holland & Barrett is travelling from Chicago to meet him later
in May to discuss resolving this issue.
The event at The Workshed was organised by the not-for-
profit business referral group BusinessWise which meets
fortnightly in Swindon on a Friday. Chartered surveyor Jerry
Thornton is the chairman. He said,“Paul was a fantastic
speaker and shared so much useful information for business
owners. Late payment can be crippling for a small business
– we had business owners in the room who had suffered and
had taken up to a year to be paid. This can cause a business to
fail. We should use the information Paul has given us to start
to tackle late payment in Swindon and beyond.”
For more information on the Small Business Commissioner
visit: www.smallbusinesscommissioner.gov.uk
Let us help
spread the word
about your business
www.businesswise.org.uk
Member Benefits:
• Not for Profit Organisation
• Fees re-invested into the group
• Exclusive business category
• Opportunities for new business
across all sectors
• Low annual membership fee
VISITORS
If you are interested in visiting BusinessWise (all
visitors can come along free of charge), we meet
every other Friday morning from 7:30am at Jury’s Inn,
Swindon town centre. We are run on a not-for-profit
basis and, as a non-competing group, one member
will be the only member representing his or her sector
in the room.
We are currently looking for new members in these
areas:
Architecture
Dentistry
Floristry
Restaurant or food industry
GP Practice
Wellbeing/health-based
Retail
Opticians
Plumber
Sport Fitness
Education
Interested?
If you would like to find out more – or come along
as a visitor, please visit our website or call
Paul Eagles on:
01793 70 60 20
For more info:
www.businesswise.org.uk
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2019
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