A small business owner was one of a handful who was invited to Westminster to discuss current issues facing enterprises across the country.
Susan Bonnar, from Lee-on-the-Solent, who runs handmade selling platforms The British Craft House and BuyIndie was invited to an event at Portcullis House in Westminster to hear from industry leaders and MPs about the issues that are holding small business owners back and their plans to eliminate them.
The main theme of the event was cashflow and how late and missed payments have a detrimental effect on small businesses, with some even leading to closures.
The event attendees heard from small business minister, Kevin Hollinrake and small business commissioner Liz Barclay, who both called for businesses to be paid much quicker.
According to the Federation of Small Businesses, around 50,000 businesses are forced to close every year due to late payments and this could rise to 440,000 this year.
Over £23.4bn is currently owed in outstanding invoices to UK businesses.
Susan, who was one of only a handful of business owners that were invited to the event, said that the topics discussed were ones that directly impacted many of her sellers on both of her platforms.
She said: ‘I’ve got sellers on my sites that categorically will not do business with large, well-known department stores because, despite it meaning their business would be put on a huge platform, they simply take too long to pay, which means they don’t have the funding to keep up with demand. It hits product-based businesses so much harder as they need the funding to invest in products and people aren’t as willing to pay upfront for products as they often are services.
‘Unfortunately, it seems to always be the large organisations that are the worst culprits, which makes it harder for the small and micro businesses to grow.’
Susan is joining leaders in urging all businesses to sign up to the Prompt Business Code – an initiative that was set up to prevent late payments which already has around 5.2 million firms signed up to it.
She said: ‘My hope is that the charter will become something that all companies sign up to by default and that late payments don’t happen. We could save so many businesses, talent and innovation from being lost due to poor payment practices.’
