These extra costs could kill off many of our small businesses
I READ with interest the article about the effect the living wage might have on supermarkets, but i think the effect on small businesses will be even more severe. My husband and i run a small business employing eight people. Two of them have worked for us for only a short while and are paid just below the living wage, so we’ll be raising their wages at the beginning of april. other members of staff have asked if they’ll be due a wage rise as they’re more senior in terms of knowledge and the time they’ve worked for us, and after april, their wages will be much closer to that of the inexperienced staff. added to this is the fact that we now also have to contribute to pensions. We were told initially that a business the size of ours would have to have an employee pension scheme in place by 2017, but we then received a letter telling us our starting date was February 1 this year. The amount of work this has involved has been phenomenal. our accountant has said i’m the only one of his small business clients who is choosing to sort out the pensions myself: it’s so complex that most of those who tried have, as he put it, ‘thrown in the towel’ and passed both wages and pensions management to an outside agency — all of which adds to the cost burden. We’re fortunate in that we’ve run our business prudently over the years and can stand the increased costs, but there are many small businesses which might be pushed over the edge by this new legislation.
VAL CROISSANT, Barton, Lincs.