Why back to school is great news for UK small businesses
As COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift in the UK, smaller companies believe that they are able to rebuild productivity, challenger Starling Bank reports.
In the latest report from Starling Bank, the reopening of schools is good news for small business owners, who will be able to return to a more standardised working week.
Between 10-19th March 2021, Starling commissioned Enterprise Nation to survey its membership of limited company owners and sole trader business leaders, gathering together information from 850 online responses. According to the findings, 61% of business owners who partook in the survey believed that social distancing will allow them to be able to plan long-term for a company’s growth again.
These sentiments are supported by foster father and entrepreneur Gareth K Thomas, who runs Cardiff-based digital consultancy, Clarified. He said: “In March 2020 I resigned myself to the fact that life would be fairly quiet until the pandemic was over. That didn’t turn out to be the case. I’ve been busier than ever juggling the changing needs of clients and new business, all while homeschooling my three foster children.”
He continued: “My time has been stretched so thinly that I’ve even had to turn a few prospective clients away, I simply didn’t have the time to take them on. The reopening of schools has given me the opportunity to focus on my business again, I’m looking forward to it.”
In addition, the implementation of the ‘road map’ by government officials has been a reassurance to SMEs, with over a quatre sharing that they are confident that they will be able to rebuild and recover after a year of the pandemic.
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Symmie Swil, Head of SME Banking at Starling supports this evidence: “More than half of our customers are parents and we’ve seen determination that they’ve demonstrated in the face of the pandemic, juggling homeschooling with work commitments.”
“The reopening of schools offers a welcome chance for entrepreneurs to refocus their efforts on managing their businesses and seeking opportunities to grow in these unpredictable times,” she added
Though businesses still have a long way to go to recover from the impacts of the last year, this is certainly a good start in the right direction.
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