Micro businesses falling between the cracks for support

From: Judith Richards, Managing Director, Yorkshire Trike Tours.

I READ with interest, your article on bed and breakfast businesses in Yorkshire (The Yorkshire Post, April 1).

I just wanted to bring to your attention that many other micro tourism companies are also ‘slipping through the net’ in terms of the government initiatives, welcome as they are.

We are a micro business within the tourism industry, offering chauffeur-driven trike tours on a motorised trike, around the Yorkshire Dales.

We are a multi award winning company, with many TV appearances, that has grown steadily and successfully, over the last six years.

We have become a business of which we are immensely proud, and were poised for a bumper 2020 season, which had just started. We had bookings right through to October, even before the season began!

We toured on March 21 and then, on March 23, the world stopped turning. We had to stop touring and the telephones stopped ringing. Run by a husband and wife team, our whole household income, as well as our business, stopped.

We have run the company as one that gives us a happy lifestyle, makes money to pay wages and overheads and gives a small profit at the end of the year. That means we do not have huge reserves of savings and we are both in late middle age.

We do not think we are eligible for the Coronavirus Staff Retention Grant, as we do not have a PAYE system set up. We run the business from home, so are not eligible for any business rate or rural business rebates.

We cannot be alone. That seems to leave us with Universal Credit and/or a CBIL. The application for UC is horrendous, particularly when you have never had to claim any benefits, of any kind, your whole life and the CLIB is a loan, not a grant, with the added strain of having to be paid back when this is all over and hopefully business returns to normal (whatever that will look like.)

Obviously, I am very aware that this is a catastrophic situation for everyone but, I am worried that we are one of many micro businesses that will fall between the cracks in terms of government help.

From: Henry Cobden, Ilkley.

WE should all be concerned about the plight of B&B owners as highlighted by your editorial (The Yorkshire Post, April 2). In it, you make a valid point about Welcome to Yorkshire. It should, at the very least, be campaigning for this sector which does so much to ‘welcome’ visitors here. Or is WTY just a cycling body?