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MID
YEAR REVIEW JUNE 2004
Jeremy
Priestley, Managing Partner of The P&A Partnership
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to
predict the outlook for the economy when you are faced with significantly
different information.
Politicians continue to tell us that the economy is strong despite
the enormous reliance on an adverse balance of payments and a spending
spree financed by credit card and mortgage finance on one hand, and
the large numbers of businesses that continue to fail on the other.
That of course may be a simplistic view to
look at a problem, but it always seems to me that there is more political
energy to supporting
new businesses rather than to help struggling businesses to get back
on their feet. The new Enterprise Act goes someway to address this,
and over the past few years we have put significant resources into
our practice to support clients needing recovery and turnaround services – with
some success.
So why do so many business continue to fail
? The list is quite lengthy and ranges from the incompetence of management
to address a shift in
the market – even Marks and Spencers struggle with this one – to
the effects of globalisation – that’s cheap imports in
reality- to the increasing burden of regulation and form filling which
is part of the job creation culture of the present Administration,
on industry.
The solutions seem straightforward – it requires more business
to take advantage of the skills of their professional advisors – accountants,
banks, supports agencies and the like. But importantly to implement
the advice, no matter how unpleasant that might be. There is always
a danger that businesses with a good product get entrenched in their
ways and are reluctant to search for new ways of running their business.
Cracking the burden of new regulation will
always be a tough one and I’ve some bad news for the 80,000 or
so window cleaners in this country. At the end of this year a EU regulation
comes into force that
prohibits the use of ladders to clean upstairs windows. Window cleaners
with have to use a hydraulic lift platform or a long pole with a cleaning
device at the end to clean upstairs windows, they will also have to
go through some health and safety training.
Now that’s a new regulation that’s bad news for window
cleaners and
ladder manufacturers – good new for mobile lift manufactures and bureaucrats!
See what I mean?
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