A more up-to-date version of this is on
http://pantstopoverty.org.uk/jobs.html
A London report on startup businesses in areas of higher employment and so higher housing costs:
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/helping_smes_to_thrivefinal.pdf
Dear Michelle Mone
I have some ideas to reduce barriers to self-employment and startups for
people in areas of high unemployment, maybe on low incomes.
(1) Open air markets attract new recruits to trading.
Anyone walking past wonders
"could I do that?".
So a duty on councils to provide for markets would be good. They could
add a rule that X% of stallholders will be recently unemployed if they
want. They or some government body can research locally-produced goods
that might be available; adult education classes or mentorship schemes
might help potential stallholders find stock in other ways.
There's a long footnote about this below because it's a
slightly awkward point.*
Stallholders need cover, tables, and storage. [added - some people think third party insurance as well. I don't know why]. Things that a central
government grant with strings attached could provide. They also have
rivals running supermarkets that have so much buying power that they can
promise to pay for goods after selling them, if they sell, and at a
reduce price if they choose to do a discount. I don't know what to do
about that problem so I will pretend that it does not exist; there is
still room for more stallholders.
One final point about councils. They have a care crisis. They do not
have money. They may want to spend money on flashy things that people
notice like markets and wifi in libraries, but devolved budgets cannot
handle it; the budgets need to be from specific central grants out of
Edinburgh or London.
(2) Internet and access.
Essential for business research, web sales, and finding-out the next
thing to do in life.
The requirements for unemployed people include free wifi, hardware, and
software which can each be a barrier to access for someone on a low
income who is just experimenting and not yet convinced of benefits.
(a) Free Wifi and Voip.
A book on Drupal web sites** states
"I’d like to also thank the good
people of Oberlin, Ohio ... this book ... was written almost entirely at
the facilities of Oberlin College and the Oberlin Public Library, with
occasional stints in several of the town’s restaurants, bars, cafes, and
lobbies, and in the Wi-Fi–enabled town square. I couldn’t have chosen a
better place.". If every public library and council estate had free
wifi, there would be a great benefit with next to no admin costs.
Taxpayers would only pay for the signal. Perhaps, over time, some method
like BT shared internet could be developed for people to share internet
connections without sharing card data and bank details and things of
that kind; a router that allows free access to your signal to neighbours
and passers-by without security risks would be a good thing to develop. I don't know how to do it nor, to be honest, know how to use Voip either but other people might.
(b) Free hardware.
It is already cheap on
ebay. Large organisations sometimes have piles of
it to give away and individuals use
Trashnothing or
Streetbank to give
it away. What's needed is a way that jobcentres and schools could
publicise existing ways for people on low incomes to get hold of this
hardware, ideally alongside everyone else but if necessary with some
kind of rationing. Would there be enough hardware? Is there a way to get
more available? My next points cover this.
(c) Free software.
Government is terrible at using open source or free software. The
Cabinet Office could take a lead; any department could take a lead,
starting with Libre Office instead of Word. It's hard to prove the
obvious: that zero licence fees would save money. It's easier to prove
that software with free licences would make used hardware more
accessible to people on low incomes, and increase participation in the
economy. If more organisations used free-to-download software, then
there would be a demand for more adult education classes using that
particular type of software, and people on those classes, such as an
office skills class for unemployed people, would have more chance of
picking-up software to use at home. Lastly, people who want to give away
a pile of old computers would have more chance of wiping data off the
disks and still providing a computer that people want as a gift. They
could give away computers with a free non-microsoft operating system and
standard open source software to run on it.
For that reason, I think the Cabinet Office or the Department for Work
and Pensions should start using Libre Office and move-on to some of the
other open source alternatives on
Osalt.com. I think that government
grants to councils and third sector organisations should be sent with a
clause that says
"if you use proprietary software we deduct £100", just
as there are clauses that say things like
"you must use an accountant"
and
"you must have an equal opportunities policy".
(d) Cheap phones and phone calls
The cost of phones is obviously a barrier to entry into parts of life,
including business, for people on low incomes.
My phone cost a few pounds second-hand. It runs on one of the pay as you
go services you can see on
http://petef.22web.org/payg.html https://payg-petef.rhcloud.com. So why do
other people pay £30 a month in rental and insurance and
confusion-marketing of free minutes mixed-in as well? I think that this
is a market failure, and that government can reduce confusion by taxing
the sale of locked mobile phones, and of monthly mobile subscriptions.
As a result, confusion-marketing of mobile phone services will reduce,
users of phones will get a clearer deal, and there will be less waste of
old phones left unused because locked to one of the networks.
A side effect of this is to reduce waste of minerals used in making phones. Not much, but a little. I heard somewhere that the political system of Congo can't cope with demand for the minerals; demand leads to protection rackets and gangs and wars, so there's no great loss to Congo from having slightly fewer mineral sales and possibly a benefit.
(Getting back to the UK - This is a
similar idea to the idea that fuel companies have fewer tariffs and
always quote the cheapest - something that government is doing already).
(3) Workshop space****.
When I saw a lot of padlocked and abandoned factories on a tour of the
olympics site, the tour guide suggested that they were un-lettable. I
rang some of the numbers on the landlords' signs. They could barely
bring themselves to answer the phone, let-alone pay-in a cheque, for
under £1,000 a month. When you hear that businesses have trouble
starting because of lack of money, that £1,000 a month could be one of
the reasons they need it, and if the market in workshop space worked
better then the space would be let and the rent would be cheap. I'd like
to invent a scheme - not very clear in my mind at the moment - by which
landlords of empty workshops were forced to let them at the market rate,
even if that rate is zero, or allow a public body to take the space over
and do it for them.
(4) Capital goods.
One of the reasons that middle-class Londoners like myself work in
services rather than manufacturing is the cost of capital goods, or at
least of transporting them, fixing them and finding somewhere to store
them even if they're for sale in an auction. It puts me off buying the
Tullis Russell paper mill or a shipyard or a washing machine factory. [added 15 August after emailing: I subscribe to posts about industrial auctions. A washing machine production-line came-up for sale in Wales a year or two ago.] Deprived areas are often areas where businesses like this have thrived
in the past but barriers to entry are thought too high to re-start any
part of them. [Places like Richmond on Thames where I live also have bits of manufacturing - there are two shipyards in this area, surviving amongst trades which need less machines.] Meanwhile, I notice a lack of access to machine time by
the hour or by the day and hope somehow that this market can grow.
Makerspaces crop-up now and then; you can google them. I'd like a scheme
by which existing companies that have specialised machines can make them
available to colleges at the weekend. I don't know how practical this
is, or what industries it helps, but I hope someone has an idea to help
people get into business as Fife papermakers or Northampton shoemakers
or Birmingham motorcycle-makers more than before.***
(5) Accountancy and book-keeping skills.
After watching the news about Kids Company I notice two things.
Not enough trustees willing to keep three months' reserve and make money
out of it by investing in P2P lending at 12%
Too many applicants said to want the services of Kids Company by its
director.
What to do?
I suggest that public services reveal more lines of their bank
statements to the internet, using the
waveapps service and some sofware
work-arounds, so that they become transparent financially. This benefits
well-run organisations. It reveals faults with firms like Kids Company.
It attracts more people who think they could do better as trustees or
book keepers or accountants.
I hope some of these ideas can help start-ups get established in areas
where unemployment is high.
regards
John Robertson trading as
Veganline.com for vegan shoes online
2 Avenue Gardens
LONDON
SW14 8BP
0208 286 9947
Free business bank accounts
Afterthought 16.07.2016 not sent
http://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2015/07/setting-up-shop-with-uk-business-bank.html has more about choosing UK business bank accounts
There is only one free business bank account available - an ICCI account with a long application form and online notes of people being turned-down.
Most personal accounts make enough money from sales and use of the customers' money to pay for the basic account service without fees. So why not the same for business? Typical standing charges are £3-£5 a month with Allied Irish cheapest at £8.50 a quarter, or £2.83 a month. The banks also charge for services that are probably nearly free to provide, like standing orders or bank tranfers in or out.
There isn't anything offered in return like a free two hour's accountancy and telephone advice, which would be easy for a bank to arrange because they've got the lines of data on their computer already.
Ideas.
(1) If anyone reading this knows how to set-up a basic bank account for business, please do it. For the rest of us, we have to hope that the market works well enough and that somebody will do it eventually.
(2) If anyone reading this wants to spend time writing screen-scraping software and updating online tables of bank accounts, please do it. Money Advice Service could help British Bankers' Association do a better account comparison service than they currently do with Moneyfacts, so that the rare free business bank accounts are easier to find. It would be more upt-to-date, include new banks that aren't in the association, and be searchable by price. The deal could be that Money Advice Service offers a link in return for British Bankers Association including non-members in their list, allowing it to be sorted by price, and keeping it up to date.
(3) Monopoly laws to prevent a bank from discriminating against business customers by preventing them from opening "trading as" accounts or changing the name of an account to the name of a company. At the moment, people like me have private accounts used for business, but there is always a risk of the thing being closed-down and a request for a business name would trigger closure.
(4) Government or someone to sponsor a basic business bank account and provide the software that other people could bolt other services on to. Given governments' record on IT, I guess this would best not be done by a ministry. Maybe if major banks were reguired to make their IT available to challenger banks at cost, or something like that, there could be a chance for free business bank accounts to become normal.
*Long footnote about selling UK-made goods to the UK market.
In the long term, I hope that the Department for Business releases more
information about UK producers of goods in the hope that people in the
UK discover how to buy them. This could make the market work more
smoothly than at the moment - recently the Tullis Russell paper mill was
closed for lack of interest by UK consumers. Surely, if people knew that
a paper mill was paying UK taxes and sustaining a democratic welfare
state like the UK, they would be attracted to its products just as they
are attracted by good distribution and low price? The government
produces no such list of UK manufacturers and information held at UK tax
offices is not available to freedom of information requests under some
special law or other. Government does produce guidance on buying paper,
published by Wrap for Defra, but it is to promote recycled office paper
and there is no mill in the UK producing recycled A4 copier paper so the
scheme puts its own taxpayers out of work.
** Drupal 7 Visual Quickstart Guide by Tom Geller
***added 15.8.15 and not sent by email:
If you look for adult education courses near the closed Tullis Russell paper mill in Fife - postcode KY7 6PB - not much comes up on Hotcourses.com. People on low incomes might look for council-run classes in case there are discounts, and there is a list of 60 on fifedirect.org.uk . The list has a lot of leasure and community-building courses. The list has few job-creation and access to business startup courses, which is fine but there is no long to show where to find them if they ecist. The few work-related ones on fifedirect avoid use of expensive capital goods. There's nothing about paper-making. There's one about making pots, presumably by hand. There are one or two about photography and software with a sting in them: they want you to use Photoshop which is however-many pounds to buy, while most of the same skills could be tought in Gimp and Paint.net which are free and which employers like Fife Council could use if they wanted to. There are probably other courses known to job centres and schools which are more geared to work and startups but I don't know where to find them and doubt that the people of Fife know much better.
****
Since writing this I saw that there is a scheme for empty workshop space, but for doing it up and making it more expensive and suitable for those tax-dodging international companies that politicans like to court. Not a scheme to rent it out for next to nothing. This is the quote
found in Businesszone.co.uk:
4. Property and Machinery Perks
If your business goal is to transform a derelict building that’s been
vacant for at least a year into a new project, then you’re sure to be
entitled to financial help at this stage.
The business premises renovation allowance offers SMEs a full 100%
allowance on buildings that require work and renovation, in order to be
fit for business purposes. Please note that qualifying properties must
be in a disadvantaged area and that this break is only open until 2017.
Capital allowances are also available for SMEs that frequently use
machinery on a daily basis. You can check for a list of eligible items
directly on the HMRC website. There’s also the Enhanced Capital
Allowance (ECA) scheme which provides SMEs with enhanced tax relief when
choosing to invest in energy saving equipment. You can find further
details on this topic here.
