Act now to avoid existential crisis for small businesses, our CEO urges UK Government

As people across the the world suffer from or are about to experience the impact of Covid-19, here at Tide we’re particularly concerned about our members: small businesses.

‘The Government must act now’

Our CEO Oliver Prill calls for three immediate actions from the UK Government to ease the impending crisis:

“We’re already starting to see a severe downturn in the turnover of small businesses in a number of sectors, with the restaurants and catering industry seeing the biggest impact. This is set to continue, accelerate and spread to other industries over the coming weeks and months, and will to lead to an existential crisis for a huge number of small businesses and self-employed people.

“We believe there are three immediate action points the UK Government needs to take:

1. Appoint a Small Business Tsar
To coordinate the Government’s efforts as the situation develops and small businesses need more support.

2. Mitigate the spread of misinformation
Clearly and regularly articulate the measures taken to ‘delay’ the spread of COVID-19 to avoid an unnecessary slow down of economic activity.

3. Significantly accelerate implementing the package of measures already announced in the Budget to support small businesses.
The process for accessing this support must  be simple, transparent and unbureaucratic to provide the help that is desperately needed.

“The majority of small businesses have limited financial reserves and a steady cash flow is crucial to them staying afloat. At Tide, we’re working quickly to introduce additional support and guidance, and to actively assist our members in accessing Government funds. 

“Action needs to be taken now to support our 5.7 million small and micro businesses before we see a major long-term economic crisis.”

We’re closely monitoring the responses of the UK Government and we’ll post more information as we have it.

We’ll do even more to support small businesses

As a financial services provider, there are things we can do to help our members – as soon as we’re ready to announce the specific actions we’re taking, we’ll post here on the blog. Come back soon to find out how we’ll be supporting our members through this extremely challenging time.

How is the coronavirus affecting you and your small business? We’re keen to hear from you – get in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter.