Blog Posts: February 2012

The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth has just been marked across the UK and I am reminded of the most famous line from Oliver Twist, “Please Sir, can I have some more?” It has recently been announced that, overall, banks fell short of their Project Merlin lending targets to small businesses by £1.1 million. So what the Dickens is going on? The figuresFigures released on 13th February showed that gross bank lending to businesses overall was £214.9 billion.... (read more...)

The Data Protection Act affects all companies and organisations that hold information about individuals – so that means you, if you keep information about your customers or prospects whether in paper or electronic format.  Many business owners are ignorant of their responsibilities, but they shouldn’t be as the censure can be quite severe. The Information Commissioner’s website has lots of detailed information on this topic, but in essence if you can answer ‘yes&rsqu.... (read more...)

With only about three months to go before the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) start enforcing the cookies regulations which came in last year, website owners might be looking to the larger organisations to give a lead on how to comply. But it would not be helpful to follow Google and Internet Explorer at present. Reports in IT industry media this week indicate that the ICO are “making enquiries with Google” about the way they use cookies and whether it complies with Eng.... (read more...)

Be pro-active. Get yourself on the front foot and ready to deal with any issues. This means understanding the terms of your lease and the type of disputes that can crop up and when they are most likely. A good start would be to sign up to our Commercial Lease Renewal service. We will highlight the issues for you and give you diary dates for action. The most common issues with commercial leases are: 1. Rent reviews 2. Lease renewals 3. Service charges 4. Dilapidations (repairs) 5. Rent arrears .... (read more...)

Many SME businesses like to offer a range of services to their clients, with the aim of remaining the preferred go-to provider. At the same time they usually want to avoid taking on a large staff in order to provide all those services. That would simply not be feasible for many business owners, especially at a time when costs need to be tightly controlled. I’m finding that a business model which seems to be increasingly favoured is for a business to work with a number of independent provid.... (read more...)