PRIME business club

This is an update to an earlier post on the same topic. Our basic position hasn’t changed:

Remember: grants to small businesses are relatively rare in the UK, usually have strings attached and are unlikely to give you 100 per cent of the money. Customers are the real people who can grant prosperity to your business, and where you should put your main effort.

But we’ve added some new links if you decide nonetheless to spend a little time hunting for them.

Introduction to business grants

Grants to ordinary businesses are not the rule in the UK, and vary from place-to-place and time-to-time. There has to be a reason why a grant-giving body would want to support you - for example to regenerate a particular run-down neighbourhood, to encourage the survival of some craft skill or to ameliorate some economic disaster afflicting a particular industry.

Except in the last case, a grant can be thought of as a kind of bribe to change your business behaviour. Expect there to be strings attached.

Applying for a grant can be a very complicated process, and even if you get it the grant will often only cover part of your project costs. You will still have to find the rest from other sources.

Q: Where can I find a grant?

A: Local Business Links are a usually a good source of information about any publicly-funded grants currently on offer in your neighbourhood. For example, grants are sometimes available for doing up premises or improving shop displays, particularly in regeneration areas. The geographic area in which such grants are available is often very precisely defined.

If you are involved in the agricultural sector or certain types of rural business a complex system of financial incentives and schemes apply. This is the most heavily grant-aided part of the economy, but as usual strings are attached and finding your way to the money can be difficult, The best place to start is Defra itself.

Internet search sites can help find a wide range of public, private and charitable initiatives. Apart from Google, there are some specialised funding search sites you can try.

Grantnet is one of three similar services for finding UK grants online. They provide a basic service free, and often have contracts with local authorities or regional development agencies to provide an enhanced service in a particular area.

www.grantnet.com

www.grantsnet.co.uk - a rival service despite similar name

www.j4b.co.uk

For example, many Yorkshire councils offer a full Grantnet service. To find it, you just put the word “grantnet” and the area you are searching for, in this case “yorkshire”, into a search engine like Google. Click to see what this looks like.

This approach also works for Northern Ireland, the Black Country or anywhere else you want to search for.

Here’s a Wolverhampton example found this way.

Be cautious about web sites (or firms) that say there is a myriad of unclaimed government grants out there and that then offer to find you one for a fee. Don’t pay until they get you the money!

There is no government grant available to everyone who wants to start a business. This is an urban myth.

The reality is that outside the arts, education and agriculture sectors grants to businesses in the UK are rare by international standards. Business here does not have a grants culture, but something a lot closer to a genuine enterprise one focused on customers.

In this culture grants have to be politically defensible. If a government body gives public money to one business, other businesses it competes will feel justified in complaining. So in the UK grants are not available across the board but only for purposes a minister, councillor or civil servant can defend.

So for example Nesta uses lottery money to encourage innovative and creative businesses. However, its grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and where large amounts are involved it usualy wants an equity stake - in other words partial ownership of the business.

In the UK the key source of revenue for businesses is overwhelmingly customers, during the start-up period as well as later. This after all is what distinguishes a business from a charity or public sector body.Businesses requiring more money to get going than early customers, friends, familly and the entrepreneurs’ own resources can provide have two other options.

They can seek a business loan from a bank or quasi-bank institution, or find an invester willing to put money into the business, usually in return for an equity stake.

Chasing for unlikely grants can be a distraction from putting together a strong offering that will prompt customers to voluntarily hand over money to you in return for your product or service.

Note also that your early customers will bring not just money when you most need it, but quite possibly also valuable information you can use to help guide your business. This feedback from real paying customers is something officials at a government agency or grant-giving charitable trust will be hard-pressed to match.

Date: Friday 29 Feb 2008 - Sunday 2nd March 2008

Time: Friday 29 Feb 1pm - 7pm, Saturday 1 March 10am - 6pm and Sunday 2 March 10am - 5pm

Venue: Olympia (Grand Hall), Hammersmith Road, West Kensington, London W14 8UX

Status: PRIME exhibiting

PRIME has a stand (tba) at the show, and is also giving talks and holding a drop-in one-on-one information clinic.

One Life is a large event with over 300 exhibitors and a programme of more than 100 seminars. It’s advisable to book in advance for the seminars, which are free.

Tickets cost £15 on the door, or £12 if you book online from the exhibition organisers. They cost £10 if you are over 60. The ticket hotline is on 0844 848 3225.

STOP PRESS
PRIME has a limited supply of free tickets - email prime@ace.org.uk

Nearest tube: Kensington Olympia (District Line). Overground train services run by Silverlink and Southern go to the same station.

Controversial new rules on Capital Gains Tax that will affect anyone planning to sell a small business have finally been clarified.  Tax will be levied on asset sales up a value of £1 million at the rate of 10 per cent, rather than the 18 per cent originally mooted. The higher rate will apply to sales above the £1 million mark.

The new regime comes into effect from the 6th of April this year.

What is Capital Gains Tax?

If you sell an asset for more than you paid for it, capital gains tax (CGT) may possibly apply. An asset is a resource such property, shares, a piece of equipment or your entire business. It is not the raw material or stock used in the normal day-to-day transactions of most businesses, which are not subject to this tax.

CGT is really aimed at gains made by investing, so if this is central to your business you will need to look into the subject thoroughly.

For most small businesses CGT is most likely to become an issue at the exit stage if you decide to sell your business as a going concern or close down and sell off (or give away) major assets.

The Chancellor’s original proposals made three months ago were highly controversial, and were greeted by frantic lobbying by business groups.

Among the various counter proposals were schemes to reduce the rate or exempt altogether those selling a business to retire.  But the government has decided against those, instead opting for a two-tier system where the lower rate is available to anyone selling assets up to the £1 million threshold.

Business owners will have a £1 million lifetime capital gains allowance that will be taxed at 10 per cent - this means you can claim relief for gains made on multiple occasions up to a cumulative total of £1 million.

The government may have decided against confining the lower rate only to those retiring because it wants to encourage people to sell or hand their businesses on to family members as going concerns. Having to wait until retirement to get the tax concession might have discouraged this.

Report in the Independent

The Chancellor’s statement to the House of Commons

Reaction from Federation of Small Businesses

NB: This event has been moved from Wednesday 5th March, the date originally advertised here.

Date: Tuesday 18th March 2008, 1:30pm to 7:30pm

Venue: Upper Room, The Crossing at St Paul’s, Dawell Street, Walsall, WS1 1DA

Status: PRIME event

This free event for people over 50 covers both starting up and running your own business. There will be trained advisers on hand to discuss your options on a one-to-one basis, and a programme of talks throught the day.

Topics to be covered will be confirmed closer to the day, but are likely to include:
• Becoming self-employed
• Benefits, tax and national insurance
• Computers and the Internet for small business
• Sorting out a self-employed pension

For more information and to book your place please contact Martin Sarling on 07717 151 168 or Freephone PRIME on 0800 783 1904
Email: martin.sarling@ace.org.uk

Location map and directions

Walsall Printable Flyer

Date: Monday 28th January 2008, 9:30am to 2:00pm

Venue: Askham Bryan College, Thirsk Centre, Thirsk Rural Business Centre, Blakey Lane, Thirsk, YO7 3AB

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself. 

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Thirsk printable flyer

Click for Google Map

Some 800,000 people between 50 and state pension age are currently inactive but want to work, according to a new report commissioned by PRIME and written by leading economist Christopher Smallwood.

The majority of new businesses are created by people in their forties and fifties - indeed business owners aged over 50 account for 15 per cent of all business start-ups in England and Wales.

Companies started by older people have a 70 per cent chance of surviving the first five years, compared with only 28 per cent for younger people. Yet the report finds that finance for Jobcentre’s New Deal self-employment programme for the over 50s has been reduced.

“It is worth putting real money behind a drive to re-employ economically inactive over-50s”, says the report’s author Christopher Smallwood.

“In order to reintroduce them to the workforce, two things are needed: (1) widespread changes in employers’ practices relating to training, retention and recruitment, and (2) a more proactive approach from Government agencies to help people back to work, particularly in the area of self-employment.”

The report says that there are still a greater number of complaints about age discrimination in the workplace than about any other form of discrimination. However, the solution does not necessarily lie in more legislation.

What is required, argues Smallwood, is a change in attitudes and practices of employers both in the public and private sector, together with a greater focus on the possibilities for self-employment.

Self-employment also has an important role to play. A self-created job can put an individual back in control of their lives and build on the skills, experience and knowledge acquired over a life-time.

However, for people coming off benefits some significant poverty traps remain that make test trading difficult. “The confusion with HMRC needs to be resolved very quickly”, says Smallwood. At the moments it’s “confusing even to the advisers trying to explain the system”.

Smallwood report full text

Smallwood report executive summary

Christopher Smallwood is a leading UK economist, and has held a wide range of senior positions in government, industry, banking and media. He is a Member of the Competition Commission and until April 2005 he was Chief Economic Adviser to Barclays plc.

Date: Tuesday 12th February 2008, 9:30am to 2:00pm

Venue: STEP Community Resource Centre, 464-466 Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, Sheffield S36 2DU

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself. 

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

sheffield-12th-february-2008.pdf

Click for Multimap

Date: Wednesday 27th February 2008, 9:30am to 2:00pm

Venue: Fathom Works, The Ropewalk, Maltkiln Road, Barton Upon Humber, North Lincolnshire,  DN18 5JT

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself. 

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Barton-upon-Humber-27th-february-2008.pdf

Click for Multimap

Three stories of older entrepeneurs are now on the BBC web site. All set up businesses in their fifties and sixties.

Myreen Young, an aromatherapist from Southampton, launched her own range of skin-care cosmetics at the age of 54. Two years later it appears to be going strong, with 30 salons across the UK also selling the MY Skincare branded products.

Ann Litster, 52, from Somerset set up her own cleaning business, also two years ago. At the time she had recently become unemployed and seriously needed the money. Her firm Hands on Cleaning now employs over 20 people.

The BBC’s third interviewee was Graham Siggs (more on his story here). He started his electrical testing business Huntspat in Cambridgeshire after being retired from the civil service at the age of 60.

“To find work at 60 is very difficult. I saw many high-flyers from the civil service end up stacking shelves,” Graham told the BBC.

“After the contract for the job I was doing ended I suddenly found myself retired at 59. A quick look at my bank balance convinced me I couldn’t stop working completely – and anyway I just didn’t feel old enough.”

Liz Friedrich, now 63, whose garden design business is profiled in Women & Home magazine.

Having already done a design course and been a keen gardener, Liz started in a small way working for friends of friends. But AFTER she had already completed several projects for paying customers she decided she needed more business expertise.

So she enrolled on PRIME partner London Metropolitan University’s Forward at 50 course. (There’s a new London Met course aimed at women setting up health and care businesses just starting up).

Liz’s new business acumen is paying off with a business venture based on feedback she was getting from her customers.

Many of her garden design clients were asking for gorgeous gardens that wouldn’t require them to do any work. Liz’s initial reaction was to patiently explain that that was just not possible. But they still kept asking.

So she’s now launching a Plant Box service with a fellow garden designer. They will sell fully-planted up containers for balconies and patios - and then come round and replant them in the spring and autumn.

STOP PRESS: APPLICATIONS HAVE NOW CLOSED.

PRIME is hiring. We are looking for someone to provide maternity cover in Belfast.

The post is part time, and involves, running workshops and giving one-to-one support. Experience of community work and/or the business advice sector is required.

The closing date for applications is Tuesday the 22nd of January 2008, and interviews are scheduled for the 29th of January, in Belfast.

Full details and an application form are on our other web site, or phone 0208 765 7833.

An up-to-date list of the technology used to put to put this web together is given on the Site credits page.

We are not using complicated or expensive tools. If you are interested in building your own site it is getting increasingly easy.

You can get a free web site to experiment with that uses similar tools at Wordpress.com  This will give you a feel for the issues even if you decide against the DIY approach and end up hiring someone to build a web site for you.

The printed paper version of “Working for YOURSELF - a practical guide to sales, marketing and preparing a business plan for people aged over 50″ is now available. You can still download the guide as a PDF, but if you would prefer a paper copy just email us your details and we’ll post you a free copy.

This PRIME guide concentrates on the subjects many people tell us they are least confident with - sales, marketing and putting a viable plan together. It doesn’t cover everything, but at only 40 pages long it’s quick to read and inspiring.

Contents
1. Customers and selling to them
2. Negotiating
3. Marketing
4. Setting prices
5. Business model, business plan
6. Checking with reality
7. Sources of support
Business glossary

If you are downloading the PDF to print out on your own printer, the square format should come out OK on standard A4 paper as it’s the same width.

The production of Working for YOURSELF, written in-house by PRIME, has been partially-funded by the Equal Diversity in Practice project, which is in turn paid for from the European Social Fund.