{"id":1899,"date":"2017-06-15T10:57:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T10:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1899"},"modified":"2017-06-15T10:57:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T10:57:22","slug":"smes-struggling-rising-operating-costs-says-fsb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/smes-struggling-rising-operating-costs-says-fsb\/","title":{"rendered":"SMEs struggling with rising operating costs, says FSB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Operating costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are now \u201cat their highest in four years,\u201d according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The comments come from FSB chairman Mike Cherry, in reaction to the latest data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).<\/p>\n<p>In recent days, the ONS has reported that the rate of inflation in the UK hit 2.9 per cent last month \u2013 representative of a 0.2 per cent rise over the 2.7 per cent recorded in April.<\/p>\n<p>Commentators have noted that both figures are well above the Bank of England\u2019s inflation rate target of two per cent.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mr Cherry, the rise will put pressure on small businesses all across the country that are \u201cstill reeling from the business rates revaluation that took effect in April.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added that businesses were \u201calso under pressure from spiralling employment and utility costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cSmall business owners and their staff are having to personally absorb these hikes and have less and less room to invest for growth. Support is urgently needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith all these cost pressures, now is certainly not the time to revisit the Government\u2019s failed proposal to hike national insurance rates on the UK\u2019s 4.8 million self-employed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Operating costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are now \u201cat their highest in four years,\u201d according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1900,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions\/1900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}