How ULEZ is devastating business in edge of London Borough's like London

The Sun sets over Mill Hill Music Complex

Every year, at this time of the year, I sit down with the bookings and sales from my music business and do an in depth dive into how the business performed, on a week by week basis for the previous year comparing with years before. We use this data to plan such things as advertising strategies, maintenance windows, etc. We analyse what we spent on advertising and how this worked.  This enables us to see what we did right in the year and what we did wrong. It shows trends in our business and enables us to work out how external events impact our business. 

In 2022, the business performed exceptionally well for the first three quarters, then had a drastic and unexpected slump for the fourth quarter. There were two main reasons for this end of year slump. The first was the death of Queen Elizabeth, which added bank holidays and cancellation of gigs, which resulted in a drop off and cancellation of bookings. The second was the world cup, which meant venues were showing football, instead of music.  This resulted in bands not requiring rehearsals. The situation was so bad for us, that we had to take out a loan to pay the VAT for the final quarter. As the final quarter of the year is traditionally the best for us, it really blindsided us. By analysing the data, we now know that if there is another world cup in the Winter (Saudi Arabia?), we will have to build cash reserves to tide us through. In 2022, we actually did some serious studio refurbishment in the summer, with cash we should have earmarked to pay bills. Had we anticipated the world cup effect, we certainly wouldn't. 

When we did some forward planning for 2023, at the start of last year, we anticipated growth of 25% as we went through the year. Our projection was that for the first two quarters this would be 15%, 20% for the third quarter and 50% for the final quarter, as Xmas gigs that didn't take place last year generated decent rehearsal income. We also expected a significant increase in retail sales. We anticipated a 10% growth in this. We have adapted our model, to try and adapt to the post covid world. This worked well generally, but we need to constantly ensure we are on top of trends that damage us.

I spent the whole of yesterday crunching the numbers. I have a lot more work to do on this but some trends are unmistakeable. On the 29th August, The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan extended the ULEZ zone on the 29th August 2023 to the edge of his jurisdiction. We are located in Mill Hill and are about 1.5 miles from the edge of the ULEZ zone. Approx 40% of our trade comes from outside of the ULEZ zone. Many of the customers for our studios and shop come from Borehamwood, Watford, other parts of Hertfordshire and beyond. Many are musicians with older vehicles. Whilst our prices are highly competetive, any customer with a non ULEZ compliant vehicle (which includes many musicians, who need to ferry gear in vans), now have to pay £12.50 per vehicle to visit us. Adding £12.50 to the cost of a session (or multiples of), makes us relatively expensive. A band of 5-6 people only needs one to have a non ULEZ complaint vehicle for the impact to be huge. 

So how did this affect us? In short, it has been pretty catastrophic. We have seen a 60-75% fall off in customers from outside the ULEZ zone, whilst seeing a 30-50% rise from customers within the zone. Whilst some businesses in central London have seen a benefit from the expansion, as customers who previously wouldn't travel in have traded cars and now are using their services, businesses like us that are on the margin, have been clobbered. We are not alone. People with non ULEZ compliant cars in Hertfordshire, who may have nipped down to Mill Hill to shop, buy services and visit our cinemas, pubs and clubs are now going elsewhere. I'd love to see how cinemas like the Phoenix and the Everyman have been affected. 

Many Londoners got rid of non compliant cars in the lead up to the ULEZ zone. They sold good vehicles off at well under their true value. Most were not scrapped, simply sold to people in areas outside the zone, who rubbed their hands at bargain. Those people are not inclined to spend money travelling into the zone. This means that businesses like ours have been clobbered. The Mayor of London has absolutely no interest in people who run small businesses. He has no interest in people working in music and the creative industries, who require large expensive vehicles to move gear around and who's finances have been devastated by the pandemic. For businesses like ours, which have a huge capital investment in our firms, it makes planning almost impossible. We have to try and work out what our cashflow is going to be for 2024, so we can plan how we spend our money. Before I did a deep dive, I'd have expected a 15% increase on last year for the studios in 2024, as the music industry continues to recover. If we factor in the ULEZ hit, we could actually see negative growth. As best I can tell from our figures, the ULEZ hit will be about 12.5% so that just about takes out any growth we would normally achieve. 

So what can we do? Well we have to decide whether it is even worth bothering advertising in Watford, Borehamwood. We currently target these in Google Adwords campaigns, but we are seeing almost zero traction. We had been planning some more studio upgrades, but we cannot realistically plan these until we can see a couple of months data against last years, to see year on year effect on normal business, as Q4 2022 was  not a normal year to baseline against, so the hit was very hard to estimate. 

It is clear to me that Sadiq Khan is not a Mayor for all London. He is a Mayor for his own, rather narrow vested interests. His ULEZ scheme offered nothing for businesses struggling to recover from the pandemic. Without people like me, who work their socks off and invest huge amounts of money, London would not be the creative hub it has become. One of his first acts was to appoint a Night time Tsar in Amy Lame. Her job was to stand up for people in the creative sector. She has done nothing to make the case for artists and others in the sector affected by ULEZ. 

On a wider note, Mill Hill Broadway, our nearest high street, is seeing more empty units than ever. It is no surprise to me that shops, etc have taken a hit as people living a mile or so away now have to pay £12.50 in ULEZ charges, if they need a pint of milk and they have a non ULEZ compliant motor. 

The real tragedy is that the Tories have chosen a virtually unelectable candidate as a challenger. Whilst her scheme to abolish ULEZ would definitely benefit businesses like mine, she seems to look like a rabbit in the headlines every time she is interviewed. 

Later this year, the studio will celebrate it's 45th Birthday. What is the biggest tragedy is that it seems that both the local council and now the Mayor of London have done everything in their power to strangle us. I am not the only local business owner to feel like this. The Federation of Small Business has done sterling work making our case, but the Mayor of London is not interested. 

Federation of Small Business calls on Mayor of London to have a ULEZ expansion rethink

    Don't let the ULEZ destroy the London Music Industry

FSB London has written to the Mayor of London, prior to the end of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone Consultation, urging him to rethink the proposal as it will negatively affect too many small and vulnerable businesses.    

  

After the long-running soap opera of Government-TfL week to month bail-outs, FSB London Chair Rowena Howie states in the letter that “FSB lack any confidence that an all-encompassing vehicle scrappage scheme to help small businesses will materialise”.

 

Key Headlines of the Survey

 

• The survey was completed by just under 600 businesses – 77 per cent of those within London
• 84 per cent of businesses responding to the survey oppose the proposal to expand the ULEZ
• Majority of responses from small businesses with 1-5 employees
• 80 per cent of respondents reliant on business based vehicles
• 30 per cent agreed to an Emission-based road pricing system as opposed to the current Congestion Charge, Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and ULEZ
• Of those businesses whose vehicle(s) do not comply – 25 per cent intend to pass charges onto customers, which will create further inflationary pressures; and 18 per cent said they would close their business.
• 19 per cent of small businesses were unaware of the proposed ULEZ expansion in 2023

 

 

 

Many small businesses will have to start making difficult decisions on whether they continue to serve central, inner, and outer London, and FSB London are calling for:

 

• Time to comply by having a similar lead in period to previous Zone extensions. During a cost of doing business crisis, we need London businesses to thrive and with a heavy reliance on service-related businesses, we feel that implementing a ‘no charge’ period until at least 29 August 2024 is a sensible measure.
• An all-encompassing Vehicle Scrappage scheme for small businesses which can be supported by Government, Mayor of London and financial institutions providing low-cost finance.
• A project bank account for any small business paying the charge from August 2023 to August 2025. The funds would be protected in a TfL ULEZ Bank Account, and a business would be able to use the funds towards purchasing a new or second hand-vehicle – subject to an upper limit.  If the fund is unspent then the money will go to TfL.

 

Rowena Howie, FSB London Policy Chair, said:

 

“The expansion of ULEZ will negatively impact thousands of small businesses through a myriad of issues including but not limited to customers choosing not to travel, businesses not being able to provide services in London and employees experiencing increased costs.

 

“To put these additional pressures on small businesses at a time when business has been adversely impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, where uncertainty and planning and reliance on supply chains has been further interrupted by new international trade agreements and where the energy crisis has further pushed up the cost of doing business, will be too much for some businesses to bear.

 

“FSB recognises the climate emergency and the commitment to move to net zero – but the Mayor must support the small business community through a ‘carrot’ and education approach to make greener decisions, discouraging non-essential business private vehicle journeys,  and not to punish essential business journeys at this time of economic crisis.

 

“We need the Mayor to ensure policy promotes a small business friendly Greater London”.

 

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Our position.

Roger Tichborne, the editor of the Barnet Eye is a member of the FSB. Roger wirtes.

Whilst we 100% agree with the objective of the Mayor of London in reducing air pollution, we feel that the ULEZ expansion has not been thought through, the timing coming at the end of the pandemic is terrible and it will be highly damaging to the sector of the economy (music and entertainment) that we operate our business in. 

Like many small businesses, our finances, which were extremely healthy at the start of the pandemic are now precarious. Our revenues for Q2 of 2022 are around 70% of the same period in 2019, which in effect means that we are not operating profitably and are just about breaking even. Our business uses a 2008 registered Ford Galaxy Turbo Diesel for deliveries and our main hire equipment subcontractor uses a similar aged diesel van. We purchased these at the time as the government was encouraging us to use diesel as it was seen as a less polluting option. Our vehicles are well maintained and in good condition, but now have lost all resale value. The pandemic has depleted our financial resources. Our intention was to replace the vehicles in 2021, but we are in no position to take on a large financial commitment, especially when we are not 100% sure of the long term viability of our business or the industry it operates in. 

We completely agree that large companies that have big fleets should comply and we are also of the opinion that people driving gas guzzling cars primarily for pleasure should also be discouraged from polluting. For us and many small businesses, we are in no position to take on the commitment of new vehicles. We believe that the Mayor and the government should offer a viable scrappage scheme and an exemption of two years to small businesses, musicians and other people who are not in a position to viably re-equip at the moment.

We are already passing on the costs of ULEZ to charities that hire equipment from us and require delivery. We have used electric bike delivery services for some bookings, however when an engineer is travelling with the equipment this is logistically not feasable, especially when there are time limitations and several drop offs required. 

We support the FSB's suggestions as pragmatic compromise solutions and hope the Mayor Listens. We beleive that it is in no one's interest if a business such as ours can no longer viably operate. We also ask the Mayor to think of the impact on musicians who are not well off and have old vehicles. Some minor modifications to the scheme would make a huge difference. I'd like to see the Mayor set up some sort of scheme where musicians  (and other affected small businesses) had access at a relatively low cost to compliant, subsidised hire/lease vehicles, with minimal paper work and financial guarantees to ensure that the vehicles can be accessed. 

We are not calling for the abandonment of the scheme, which we generally support. We are however calling for it to be a progressive scheme, not just a ploy to hoover up cash for TFL. All schemes can be improved and we believe that offering suggestions to do this is a positive way forward. If the Mayor of London simply ignores the struggle of small business, he is not serving London's best interests

 

Businesses need clear guidance on lifting the lockdown, not waffle

There are enough armchair experts pontificating on what Boris should or shouldn't do for the country. As I'm not an expert, I have refrained from getting too involved in writing lengthy tomes on my blog on how the country should be run in these difficult times. However, I run a business. I have twelve people who work for me. I have over 6,000 regular customers, all of whom see making music as a central part of their lives. Many live in flats, so cannot make the noise they need to (especially drummers), without driving the neighbours mad. We closed our business when the government introduced the lockdown. We were given no notice of the closure. We had to make all sorts of major decisions on the hoof. I had a couple of sleepless nights, working out what is the best for all. Now all of our staff apart from two are on furlough. When you have spent 40 years building a business, finding out you will have zero income for months on end is a very difficult situation to plan for. Fortunately schemes such as the furlough have lessened the blow for our staff. But now it appears we are planning to come out of the lockdown. Whilst to some extent, I can forgive Boris the panicky way he brought the lockdown in, as he was metaphorically caught with his pants down by the virus, they've had two months to plan the end of it. The roadmap should be clear and the timescales easy to understand. If they have to caveat it for unknowns, then fine, but give us some proper idea of when and how we can open. To me, the announcement last night was flawed in several ways, from the business perspective. The message wasn't clear. The timing, 7pm on a Sunday was quite unhelpful, giving some businesses less than 12 hours to prepare for a return to work. There was no clear roadmap of the wider lifting. The colour coded phasing was all very well, but the criteria could and should be clearly spelled out. What is the R rate for each phase. How many people can be infected before it is safe. When will the apps, the testing and the PPE be sorted out. Personally, I think that with chaos in the testing and PPE sector, we are not ready. Boris has stated that we need capacity in the NHS to deal with it. Without PPE and testing for everyone who needs it, we are clearly not there. This isn't a criticism, it's a statement of fact. 

We have been doing what we can for the community during lockdown. Last week, we opened our doors to be used as a distribution depot for a local relief scheme, where food parcels were bagged up.

We may be closed as a music studio, but we were open today as a food distribution point for a local Covid food distribution scheme. pic.twitter.com/Wzx2TZ5Bj2

— #MillHillMusicComplex (@MillHillMusicCo) May 6, 2020

We wish there was more we could do. The response of our local community has been amazing, and I think we can all be proud. But our response works best when we all understand the rules and messages.

Last night we had the most confusing announcement imaginable. I was hoping for some sort of sensible roadmap that would allow me to give guidance to our staff and customers. As a very niche business (or group of businesses to be technically correct), reopening will be a situation that we need to manage. If we have a degree of notice, then we can act accordingly. This means letting customers know we will be reopening, making new staff rosters, working out what we need to buy and when we need to resume refuse collections etc. When Boris announced that 'people who can't work from home, should go to work' what exactly did that mean? There is no point our staff coming to work if we are shut. As best I can understand, the announcement indicated that we should prepare to reopen in June, albeit with some sensible social; distancing measures in place. If we reopen on Monday 1st June, then what will this mean? Musicians don't generally just turn up for a band rehearsal. They need to organise it, so it will take at least a weeks notice to get anywhere near a situation where it is worth opening the doors. Of course there are considerations. Should we get the yellow tape out so that musicians know where to stand so they have 2 metres distance between them and their band mates? Should we simply allow them to use their common sense? We normally have two staff on for busy shifts.  We need to protect their wellbeing, so what procedures will we need for this? 

There are practical issues as well. How do we enforce social distancing in the toilets? One approach would be to only open our disabled toilet. That is a single occupant lavatory, whereas the male and female have two cubicles. These glamorous conundrums are key to us getting the studios open again. 

One of the major criticisms I have of Parliament is that there is virtually no one who has run a small business sitting as an MP or in cabinet. Whilst Boris was a journalist and Sir Keir Starmer a leading lawyer, none of them has ever had to worry about the logistics of keeping tea machines working, toilets unblocked and bins emptied. They won't have any concept of the joys of staff rosters and shift patterns, and they clearly don't have to worry about their customers being to scared to come to use their services. 

The one minister who has demonstrated a grip on the situation is the Chancellor. His measures have thus far saved millions of businesses. It will be difficult, but the various schemes have made a real and material difference. There is now talk that the Furlough will be scaled back. If this is done before businesses can reopen, it will all have been in vain. The scaling back can only be safely done when the income starts to roll back in. Even if people had no fear of returning, it would doubtless take us a month to get back to anything like a normal workload. Some of our staff will not be returning any time soon as they are in long term self isolation for health reasons. I am envisaging that our hours will be much shorter than they have been initially. But this is a major challenge, as we'd need to reconfigure our online booking system, a task that has costs of its own. 

I think Boris gave businesses a major headache announcing that everyone should go back to work at 7pm on a Sunday evening. How on earth can management deal with that situation. If he'd said 'from Wednesday' then that would have given everyone time to plan and work out how that could be safely implemented. Those working in construction will potentially be faced with workers turning up, before the sites have worked out safe protocols for performing tasks. 

The Federation of Small Business

I am at a loss as to who actually is advising Boris. Organisations like the TUC, CBI, FSB etc should be consulted and their feedback sought. No business deals well with sudden massive policy changes. Most businesses want a safe environment for staff and customers. They want to be treated as grown up partners by the government. I don't expect Boris to speak to me personally, but I joined the Federation of Small Business, as did hundreds of thousands of other small businesses, so that they could have a seat at the table and work with the Government to deliver policies that work for the UK economy. 

In short, the government needs to develop clear guidelines, give proper timescales and work with the organisations that represent the various sectors of the economy, for the mutual benefit of all.

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Please note that I am writing this as a personal view. I am not writing it to represent the Federation of Small Business or anyone else. 

The Federation of Small Business Calendar for June in Barnet

The Barnet Eye is a supporter of the Federation of Small Business. This is the largest organisation representing SME companies in the UK. The organisation lobbies hard for small business and organised all manner of regular events in our locality.

The organisation has an excellent strategy for High Street regeneration. I've been a member for over 20 years and I even met the designer of our websites at one of the networking events, as well as many sponsors for the local festivals we help run.

If you run a small business, why not come along.


Breakfast morning network events taking place during the next few weeks.

• On Monday 3 June, I will be at Café Buzz 783 High Road N12 8JY from 8.00am Please come along to hear Dionne Williams of Get Set Go London about Developing a Mindset for Success
• On Tuesday 11 June is the Brent session at The Delipod Hub in Willesden Library High Road - Willesden Green- NW10 2SF.  
• The Enfield event is on 17 June the Enfield event takes place at Malone & Co. 6 Burliegh Way, Enfield EN2 6AE.

The evening women’s networking session (open to all) is now settled into its new home

• The Buzzing Business Club will be on 27 May at its new venue – Refractions 363 Ballards Ln, North Finchley, London N12 8LJ.

There are other sessions too…

• Networking takes place in Bromley, Newham and Hackney with sessions being planned for Harrow, Ealing and Hounslow.

Details of June events can be found on the events’ calendar.

Federation of Small Business Network Breakfast with Mike Freer (how do you like your cheese?)

This morning we had the regular FSB North London Network Breakfast.  As part of the FSB's engagement with local political leaders, the FSB invited candidates from the main parties to speak to the meeting. This month it was the turn of Mike Freer. Mike is the Conservative candidate and has been the MP for the last five years.

Mike was nice and early and spent the first hour mingling with various people and chatting informally. I used to see Mike quite regularly when he was leader of the council, but realised that this was the first time I've seen him in the flesh since he was elected as MP in 2010. As he isn't my MP, I suppose that this is not really surprising. Unike some MP's who have aged visibly over the period, being an MP seems to be agreeing with Mike. He actually looked younger than he often did when he was council leader. Mike stood up and gave his presentation and I actually thought he gave a very good presentation.

He started by talking about the work of the coalition. He said the coalition had done a good job and that he wasn't going to denigrate his Lib Dem colleagues. He felt the two parties had worked very well together to put the country back on its feet. He reminded us that the treasury secretary had left his successor a note saying he'd spent all the money when Labour vacated office. He gave us some facts and figures about the economy and how well the coaition had done. Employment up, people lifted out of tax, lending improving.  Mike told us that he'd run a small business for three years and didn't enjoy the experience. He said he was glad to get his old job back at Barclays. As he was addressing an audience of people who haven't thrown in the towel, I thought this was a brave thing to announce, given that regulations were one of the reasons he cited and that has got worse with every government. Mike also told us that the government was taking a serious look at business rates reform. This would be a major boost if it could be abolished. I believe it could create up to half a million new jobs.

I have no idea whether Lynton Crosby has ordered Tories to "nice up" following the debacle of last week, but Mike was in a very jovial mood and I thought his pitch was excellent ( regular readers will know I am not generally a fan, but credit where its due).

Then on to the questions. I got in first with a question about parking. Mike said he had worked with Eric Pickles to try and improve the situation. He said that he'd had cross words with former Tory Councillor Brian Coleman over the botched scrapping of cash pay and display. He said that he didn't think parking was as important to the High Street as many businesses claim and that it would cost  £2 million. Cafe Buzz owner Helen Michael was not impressed. She told Mike that Barnet that Barnet Council had £7 million in the special parking account, which is reserved for such matters. Mike stated that if it was simple, Labour would have proposed something in the council budget. Helen was not impressed with this

The next question was on the EU. Mike (who interstingly was wearinga  purple tie) siad he thought we should have an election and he beleived the UK would vote to stay in. He was questioned about the uncertainty this would create, but pointed out there is already a degree of uncertainty and this hadn't stopped the UK attracting more investment than the rest of the EU put together. Mike stated that having the referendum would allow the UK to get a better deal. Rather bizarrely he then stated that he visits France regularly and in France no one enforces EU regulation in Cheese Shops. It seems that Barnet Tories have a bit of a cheese shop obsession. First Matthew Offord promised us a Cheese shop in Mill Hill, now Mike claims that David Cameron will change the law to make it easier removing EU bureaucracy. I suspect that Mikes hopes will prove as vain as those of us in Mill Hill who like a bit of the smelly stuff on top of our crackers! Mike very skillfully avoided actually saying whether he was for or anti EU membership.

The next question was about HS2. Did Mike personally support "wasting £80 billion" on the project. I found myself in complete agreement with Mike. He supports HS2 and would like to see such projects built far quicker. He pointed out that in France, communities campaign for such projects to come to their region and questioned why the British are so NIMBY in their attitude. He didn't mention that in France the government pays you a premium for suffering property blight, so it can be a nice little earner to have a line at the bottom of your garden. In the UK you will get screwed over by dodgy compulsory purchase legislation.

Another question was on the subject of commercial property being converted into housing. Mike quoted the example of a few office blocks that were not fit for purpose in the Finchley and Golders Green area, that were under utilised and stated this was a good thing. I asked him about what happened to Trafalgar House in Mill Hill, where dozens of businesses were thrown out of a perfectly good office block to allow developers to cash in. Mike rather ducked the question with "I cant comment it isn't on my patch answer".

I spoke to a couple of the local business owners after the meeting and asked what they thought of Mike. I was a bit surprised by the answers. The response wasn't as positive as I'd expected, given that I thought he'd done quite well "Typical politician, promise the earth before the election" was one comment. Another one was "Same old C*** as the council about parking, didn't seem to happy when the £7 million in the reserves was mentioned". Another one reminded me that they had the inheritance tax cut in the last election manifesto and said "if it won't cost anything as they claim, why didn't they do it this time?". I think people who own and run businesses are a tad cynical.

One interesting little side note. We were graced with a visit from the local Tory blogger Dan Hope,  who video'd the procedings, so if you were unlucky enough to miss the fun, you may be able to catch the repeats (strangley Mr Hope did not attend the Green or Labour sessions) on his blog at some point. I am rather hoping that the Cheese comments are preserved for posterity. 

Barnet Council consultation on small business - The Elephant in the room

There is a press release on the Barnet Council website, asking for ideas to help the council engage with small business in the Borough. Rather interestingly it tells us that more people start small businesses in Barnet than any other London borough. It is good that we are such an enterprising lot, but in truth as Barnet has the largest population of any London Borough, this is not really that surprising. Sadly it reveals that a higher than average number of these businesses fail. Whilst there is a myriad of reasons for this, clearly the council is not offering the support it could to small business.

In the press release, Deputy Leader of the Council Dan Thomas says

“Councils cannot wave a magic wand and transform the economy, but we can work to make sure the whole public sector is working with business in mind, in part by minimising red tape and stepping out of the way. But there is a positive role for councils to play. The investment that Barnet Council has put into supporting NEETS, young people not in education, employment or training, has played a part in Barnet having the fourth lowest proportion of such young people in the UK, and shows what a small amount of well targeted support can achieve.“I would like to hear from residents and businesses where they think similarly careful investment and other support could help business in the borough.” 

Sadly it appears that Dan just hasn't been paying attention. There are plenty of forums where he could come along. The FSB hold a free breakfast networking session for Small businesses the first Monday of every month at Cafe Buzz in North Finchley. It's free to attend and 20-30 small business owners regularly attend. It is open to all. There are all manner of similar events, hosted by other organinsations as well. If Mr Thomas attended any of these, he'd hear two common themes.

1. Barnet Council has destroyed many successful businesses with its botched parking policies. High charges, abolishing pay and display cash machines etc have created a hostile environment in the High Street.

2. The councils business rates are administered in a way that is extremely detrimental to business. I have had several appeals against the rates and the average time to resolve these (all in my favour with large reductions and refunds) has been 18 months. Even worse, we've seen recent cases of use of baliffs to chase debts, where it was clear that the business in question was in the process of resolving the issue.

It is all very well to make such positive statements, but any Barnet Councillor who bothered to read blogs such as this would know just what a difficult organisation Barnet Council is to deal with. I personally had an issue with the council when we were investing in our new studio complex. The new development has been open for 2 years and we've generated over 50 full and part time jobs in the Borough. The development was held up for nearly three months because the council insisited on changes to the plans costing thousands of pounds. Why? Because they wanted a 40' High building lowered by 9 inches, so that people in Mill Hill Park could have a better view of the M1 overbridge in Bunns Lane. Who benefitted from this? The story is repeated time and time again in small planning applications lodged by businesses all over the borough.

The council has no portal on its website to promote the thousands of local businesses or sell Barnet as a place to do business. How hard would this be to reslove. If you own a business and have had an issue with Barnet Council, please email Dan Thomas and explain. It is the only way things will improve.

Here is the full statement

Barnet Council is asking residents, business and other organisations for their views on a new Entrepreneurial Barnet policy.The council is aiming to make the borough the best place in London to be a small business.The policy explores how the whole public sector in the borough can work together to support successful business.

This would potentially include ensuring there is the right mix of skills available in the workforce for local employers, making it easier for local businesses to bid for public sector contracts, working to make town centres safe and attractive, and getting the right mix of residential and employment opportunities in regeneration areas.Barnet currently has more business start-ups than almost any London borough (2,912 in 2012) but only 53 per cent of businesses survive more than three years, less than the outer London average.
Councillor Daniel Thomas, Deputy Leader of Barnet Council, said: “Councils cannot wave a magic wand and transform the economy, but we can work to make sure the whole public sector is working with business in mind, in part by minimising red tape and stepping out of the way.

“But there is a positive role for councils to play. The investment that Barnet Council has put into supporting NEETS, young people not in education, employment or training, has played a part in Barnet having the fourth lowest proportion of such young people in the UK, and shows what a small amount of well targeted support can achieve.
“I would like to hear from residents and businesses where they think similarly careful investment and other support could help business in the borough.”
To view the consultation documents and to comment on the draft policy visit the engage wesbsite.

 Click here for the original press release
http://www.barnet.gov.uk/news/article/587/consultation_launched_on_ways_to_support_barnet_businesses

Barnet - A great place to do business?

I've run a business in Barnet for 35 years. We are one of the leading studios in London, if not the world. Many world famous artists started their careers rehearsing and recording at our studios. One thing which has struck me over the years is just how bad our local council is at telling the story about what a good place to do business the London Borough of Barnet is. We have great tube and rail connections to London and to the rest of the country and we are ideally placed on the road network as well. We have a great mix of urban developments and green belt, making the borough a great place to live and work. Contrary to the myths of the time, economic prosperity is not generated by housing. It is generated by jobs and business. without this, there would be no economy to support the mortgages and rents. Therefore it is vital that Barnet Council should play its part.

In Barnet, we have a vibrant branch of the Federation of Small Business. Every month, on the first Monday (Yesterday), they hold a networking meeting at Cafe Buzz in Finchley. The meeting is free to attend and dozens of local traders turn up to exchange details and discuss matters. There is a presentation. I was pleased to see a representative from the council at yesterdays meeting. I've recently been lobbying the council to do  its part and amongst the suggestions I've made have been]

a) Improve the visibility of business services on the council website
b) Have pictures on the front page of the site talling what a great place Barnet is for business
c) Business friendly parking policies.
d) Better and more identifyable corporate branding
e) Details of local businesses and services in the Borough on  teh council website

You may think that point d) is irrelevant, but the NHS style corporate logo for Barnet is tired and looks like the NHS logo. It is ideal for a sick borough. I'd like to see Barnet Council encourage businesses based in Barnet to display the Barnet logo on their website and have a link back to the council pages on what a great place Barnet is to do business (which don't currently exist).

There are many challenges facing the London Borough of Barnet, but local businesses providing local jobs will make a significant difference to solving them. For single parents with school age children, often a local job is the only realistic option to benefits. The more such jobs we create, the less tax we'll all pay. Surely our Conservative cuncil should recognise this and proactively be promoting policies to which create prosperity? Making it easy to do business in the Borough and telling our story would be a good place to start. Every job on the highstreet is potentially one less person claiming benefits and every job destroyed by bad policies such as the Brian Coleman era parking regime is another call on your wallet in tax.

I would like to invite the Leader of the Council, Richard Cornelius to the next Cafe Buzz business network meeting in October, so he can see for himself what the council should be doing and who they should be talking to.