HLAS

From 6-10 November the British Business Bank, along with several partners from across the UK, will host Business Finance Week 2023. With a host of free of charge nationwide and regional in-person events, webinars and more, Business Finance Week helps smaller businesses learn about the different finance options available to them to support their individual needs. Some of the events running are: An introduction to angel investment Demystifying early-stage equity finance Founder Fables and Investor Tales: Common mistakes and how to avoid them How to start your business and avoid costly mistakes Making sense of start-up funding: Where do I [...]

By paying the real Living Wage, employers are voluntarily taking a stand to ensure their employees can earn a wage which is enough to live on. As well as it being the right thing to do, there is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the business benefits of becoming a Living Wage employer. The Living Wage rates are independently calculated based on the real cost of living in the UK and London. The new rates for 2023/24 are: £12 per hour UK rate; and £13.15 London rate. See: Real Living Wage increases to £12 in UK and £13.15 in London | Living [...]

The amount of VAT a business pays or claims back from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is usually the difference between the VAT charged by the business to customers and the VAT the business pays on their own purchases. With the Flat Rate Scheme: you pay a fixed rate of VAT to HMRC; you keep the difference between what you invoice your customers and pay to HMRC; you cannot reclaim the VAT on your purchases - except for certain capital assets over £2,000; and to join the scheme your VAT turnover must be £150,000 or less (excluding VAT), and you must apply to HMRC. The main benefits of the scheme are: simplified record [...]

As the winter sets in, the cost of energy will be a key issue for all businesses. The High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult has launched a pilot scheme to help small manufacturers cut energy usage. The Manufacturing Energy Toolkit is a guided assessment which is carried out by HVM Catapult experts to create a better understanding of energy usage and sources. With the Manufacturing Energy Toolkit, the HVM Catapult is opening its doors to help manufacturers make their processes more energy efficient, cutting their energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 46%. See: Manufacturing Energy Toolkit for SMEs [...]

Changes to Alcohol Duty took effect on 1‌‌‌ ‌‌August 2023. This includes new reliefs which could reduce your tax bill: A Small Producer Relief: which reforms and extends the relief previously enjoyed by small breweries, to producers of all alcoholic products under 8.5% ABV; and A reduced rate for draught products also known as Draught Relief, which reduces the tax due on draught alcoholic products under 8.5% ABV, packaged in containers of at least 20 litres, and designed to connect to a qualifying dispense system. Please contact us to check if you can take advantage of the new reliefs and [...]

Funding is available for immersive digital mental health therapeutic solutions. Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4.5 million in innovation projects across the two strands of the Mindset XR competition. The aim of this competition is to develop digital therapeutic extended reality (XR) solutions to provide improved delivery of mental health and wellbeing services. This competition is split into two strands: strand 1 - for feasibility studies strand 2 - for industrial research Your project must undertake feasibility studies or industrial research in the application of XR to provide mental health care solutions. Your [...]

Following a public consultation, Wine: reforms to retained EU law, the UK government has set out reforms for the wine sector which will begin in 2024. Feedback from the wine industry has shown that certain regulations within the current 400-page rulebook have been stifling innovation and preventing the introduction of more efficient and sustainable practices. Changes will include removing some packaging requirements – such as ending the mandatory requirement that certain sparkling wines must have foil caps and mushroom-shaped stoppers. This will reduce unnecessary waste and packaging costs for businesses. Outdated rules around bottle shapes will also be scrapped, freeing [...]

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £25 million in the best game-changing and world-leading ideas. Ideas need to be designed for swift, successful commercialisation and be genuinely new and novel, not just disruptive within their sector. All proposals must be business-focused, with deliverable, realistic, adequately resourced plans to achieve return on investment, growth and market share following project completion. Applications can come from any area of technology and be applied to any part of the economy, such as, but not exclusively: net-zero, the arts, and design and media. To be in scope, your proposal [...]

The UK has secured a two-year extension to rules which help British companies to access lower or zero tariffs when selling goods to South Korea. The extension has been secured under the UK-South Korea free trade agreement and comes as welcome news for businesses who can continue to avoid the high tariffs imposed by South Korea on products entering the country. It also comes ahead of the launch of negotiations on a new, modernised trade deal between the UK and South Korea which will cover new sectors like digital, expected before the end of the year. South Korea is the [...]

The High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult could make it easier for domestic manufacturers to connect with a new, free to use, UK Supply Chain Directory. The platform harnesses the power of machine learning to provide up-to-date information on UK manufacturers. It combines publicly accessible data with web scraping to create the single most data-rich source of UK's manufacturers and suppliers. It also allows companies to put up their company profile to update and enrich their content. HVM keep Companies House as a reference and it joins information coming from companies' websites, CreditSafe, and Dealroom. This new tool is bringing together [...]