Covid-19: Measures for business

Friday 20 March 20120:

Good evening,

I know you must be worried as a business owner, as am I, and I thought I would take some time to write tonight.

I have been speaking with clients over the last few days, particularly those that are exposed to the hospitality sector. But increasingly those affected by manufacturing cessation as a result of being part of a supply chain.

Most of us employ people, and as they will be for you, tonight, they are at the forefront of my mind.

Of those that I have been speaking with, many of you are worried about taking out loans, without certainty of when the economy will turnaround. It is hard to even project what will happen to sales as we do not know how long the situation will be in place for: as of this morning we thought 12 weeks, but by lunchtime perhaps closer to 12 months. How can a business owner present a forecast for a loan application on that basis?

I have been urging clients to delay decisions on staffing levels in the hope that employment support will be offered by the government, and this evening it has. We wait to see the mechanisms for the claims but for employees who are required to be away from work, employers can apply for a grant for 80% of pay.

This is excellent news, although the timescale for receipt to the end of April will be too long for some businesses – those affected by the hospitality sector are likely to have at most 4 weeks before they need to eat into debt facilities.

Corporation tax deferral, PAYE, NIC and VAT have been on my mind too, and I am pleased that VAT deferral will happen now for the next quarter. Time to pay will apply to income tax payments on account due in July 2020, with deferral to January 2021.

Over the weekend Louise and I will prepare some more thoughts and publish on Monday.

They will though be general. And I am aware that access to loans will not be available until Monday (together with details of actually how to go about getting access). So please talk to us. If you are a client you already know how to contact us: if not I offer my personal email address and mobile number being adrian.barker@cbslgroup.com and 07779 613 348. If you are worried, please get in touch and we will do our best to help

Which just leaves me to say that we would like to wish you, your families and your staff well during these difficult times and will do all that we can to support you.