CEO of RFK Group (Rugby Fitted Kitchens) Trevor Scott looks at how changes brought about by the Spring budget are impacting the bottom line of KBB retail

Judging by the number of responses and the well over 2000 engagements, I clearly touched a nerve when I recently posted on my LinkedIn feed about the rising costs of simply doing business.

Specifically referencing the double whammy of the rise in NI contributions and the significant changes, for the worse, in business rates brought on by the reduction in rates relief for retail premises.

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For us I suggested these two changes alone were going to cost us an extra £17.5k per annum

Having asked around my peer group it seems anywhere between £20 & £30k per annum is more like it.

This is huge!

That’s a new junior/trainee member of staff, or a new van or a couple of displays that simply aren’t going to happen this year.

It’s very, very frustrating. As if we don’t have enough hurdles to jump over to remain in business anyway these straight off the bottom-line extra costs mean we’re going to have to run a lot faster just to stand still.

In our case that’s an extra 3 or 4 kitchens a year we need to sell just to generate enough profit to pay these bills.

Here’s a few quotes taken from my informal research group:

“We were considering taking on an apprentice, but with rising minimum wage and apprentice wage increases, that idea is likely going on the back burner.”

“The state of play for us is that investment in our business is curtailed, we won’t be looking to hire any new staff for now, we will not add any fitters to our payroll…the way out is to reduce staff, do less and see where we are in 12 months…”

And we’re talking about successful, generally thriving and forward thinking business people here so what hope is there for SME’s who want to grow their business’s this year?

Sadly not much….