HLAS

The Prince’s Countryside Fund Farm Resilience Programme (FRP) offers free business skills training to family farmers across the UK. The programme is open to dairy and livestock family farm businesses and takes a whole-farm and whole-family approach. Workshops include: Business Health Check, Benchmarking, Practical cost management, Getting to know your finances, Managing your farmed environment, Planning your future, and Business planning and managing change. See: Farm Resilience Programme - The Prince's Countryside Fund (princescountrysidefund.org.uk)

The Green Home Finance Accelerator (GHFA), part of the UK Government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) will provide up to £20 million grant funding to support the design, development and piloting of a range of finance propositions which encourage domestic energy efficiency and low carbon heating retrofits in the owner-occupied and private rented sectors. The UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) wants as many UK homes as possible to reach Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2035. Private investment, alongside government support, will be essential to meet this target – and the green finance market can play [...]

The way in which UK organisations responsible for packaging must carry out their recycling responsibilities is changing. If you are affected by the new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging (including reforms to the Packaging Recycling Note (PRN) system), you need to start to collect the correct packaging data from 1 January 2023. Collection of your packaging data won’t become mandatory until March 2023, and you will need to start reporting this data from July 2023. These regulations will apply to larger organisations that handle and supply packaging to businesses and consumers. This may also include products imported from outside the UK and online marketplaces. See: How to [...]

Businesses that use Royal Mail's services are urged to plan ahead as strike action is expected to take place this winter. If you use Royal Mail to deliver your goods you should be aware of planned industrial action that is due to take place on: Wednesday 14 December 2022 Thursday 15 December 2022 Royal Mail's services will be affected by delays to mail posted the day before, during, or in the days after any strike action. See: Royal Mail strike updates | Royal Mail Group Ltd

In response to a public consultation earlier this year, the government has confirmed that the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations will be strengthened to protect essential and digital services against increasingly sophisticated and frequent cyber-attacks, both now and in the future. The UK NIS Regulations came into force in 2018 to improve the cyber security of companies providing critical services. Organisations which fail to put in place effective cyber security measures can be fined as much as £17 million for non-compliance. But high profile attacks such as Operation CloudHopper, which targeted managed service providers and compromised thousands of organisations at the same time, [...]

Millions of employees will be able to request flexible working from day one of their employment, under new government plans to make flexible working the default. Flexible working doesn’t just mean a combination of working from home and in the office – it can mean employees making use of job-sharing, flexitime, and working compressed, annualised, or staggered hours. The new measures will give employees greater access to flexibility over where, when, and how they work, and the government hopes will lead to happier, more productive staff. Flexible working has been found to help employees balance their work and home life, [...]

For the last couple of years during the Covid-19 pandemic many businesses put on “virtual” Christmas parties for their employees and HMRC agreed that would be acceptable and that the exemption from tax would continue to apply. There continues to be no taxable benefit for employees provided that all staff are invited, and the cost does not exceed £150 a head, inclusive of VAT. The £150 per head limit applies to a tax year, so if you have also had an annual summer event then provided the combined cost of the two events is no more than £150 a head [...]

This is a timely reminder that employers may make small tax-free gifts to employees and directors if all of the following conditions apply: The cost to the employer is £50 or less It is not cash or a cash voucher It is not a reward for their work or performance There is no contractual entitlement It is not provided as part of a salary sacrifice arrangement This is known as the ‘trivial benefit’ exemption. Employers do not need to pay tax or National Insurance or let HMRC know, however, they need to keep a record of the gifts should HMRC [...]

Earlier this month, the business secretary Grant Schnapps announced a government review into tackling late payments for small businesses, while also urging large companies to pay their smaller suppliers promptly. Small businesses routinely suffer from late payments from businesses they supply, which can lead to cash flow problems, putting their firms at risk and preventing them from growing. The majority of small businesses do not have large balance sheets and cannot accommodate long payment terms or delays to receiving payment within their cash flow cycle. Significant time and resources are spent on chasing late payments. The Payment and Cash Flow [...]

Innovate UK are to invest up to £4 million in an innovation project. This will be to develop and demonstrate closed-loop recycling for the fashion and textile sector at scale. This is the initial activity of a £15 million UK Research and Innovation Circular Fashion Programme. The aim of this competition is to fund a research and development activity demonstrator. This will demonstrate new technologies, services, processes and business models capable of addressing the recycling and sorting challenges, as part of the UK’s fashion and textile sector and their direct supply chains. See: Competition overview - UKRI Circular fashion programme: [...]