Small Business Saturday is on 7th December. The Green Party is calling on government to offer a support package to help firms thrive in their green transition.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of communities and help make our towns and cities diverse, distinctive and unique. Many businesses want to make a success of becoming more sustainable, but they need government to get behind them and offer the right support.
It is crucial that both national and local government help small and independent businesses to survive and ultimately thrive.
Green Proposals include:
- Grants for small businesses to help them go greener. This would include investing an additional £2 billion in Green Transition Grants for small businesses to help them prepare for and take advantage of the opportunities offered by greening the economy. Analysis by the British Business Bank found that SMEs account for almost one third of all UK emissions and around half of total UK business emissions. The Government is currently providing very little financial support for small business in the transition to Net Zero. Currently only small sums from the UK’s Shared Prosperity Fund have been channelled via local authorities. We need a competitively fair transition to net zero that benefits rather than hinders SMEs.
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Bring in the prompt payment code into law. This would prevent late payers from pub lic-procurement contracts. We would mandate the Small Business Commissioner to investigate potential instances of poor payment proactively, instead of only when a complaint has been made. It is not fair that the public sector and large business stress the cash flow of SME suppliers through late payment.
- Assistance for small businesses to decarbonise their transport needs. Independent traders and tradespeople need access to electric vans and other low carbon transport solutions on the same terms as large companies. SMEs face greater barriers to decarbonising their transport than do large businesses. For instance, they are impacted by market shortages of second-hand, low emissions vehicles which has meant larger businesses have been able to obtain suitable vehicles while smaller businesses have not. Greens want to see government offering information, advice and market interventions such as grants so that SMEs are able to obtain suitable vehicles and have the right incentives to overcome these and other barriers.
- Reform VAT to support small businesses. There needs to be a review of our VAT system so that it differentially supports smaller shops and businesses compared to larger and online businesses.
- Suspend Covid loan repayments. Similarly, Covid loans were a great help for businesses during the pandemic lockdowns, but repayments are now adding to the financial strain of the cost-of-living crisis. Repayments of Covid loans should be suspended to provide much-needed relief to businesses.
