After two years of precipitous drops in growth, Wilkins Kennedy states that more small business bank accounts are starting to rise again.
According to the top chartered accountancy firm, Companies House reported a huge surge in the number of new small business registering with them; the 2009-2010 year jumped to over 362,000, a ten per cent jump over the 2008-2009 numbers of just over 330,000.
This is much changed from the last two years, which were marked with the worst economic downturn experienced for a generation. New company formations fell 17 per cent in 2007-2008 and again by 11 per cent the following year.
Wilkins Kennedy stated that the resilience of the UK’s business economy was demonstrated by the statistical uptick. The various measures recently announced by the government in the new emergency budget could give an even further boost to new company creation, they added.
Roger Williams, Partner, said that the figures showed how rapidly small businesses have been able to bounce back despite the recession’s hard blows against them, stating that the last economic downturn in 1990-1991 that was less than half as severe as the most recent one. He added that hundreds of thousands of UK workers had lost their employment since the inception of the banking crisis, but a sizable percentage of them have picked themselves back up and taken steps to start their own businesses, such as opening a business bank account or applying for a business loan. Williams concluded his remarks by acknowledging that starting a new business is one of the most difficult things someone can do, especially in light of former employees having to use their houses as security for business loans.
Wilkins Kennedy pointed out which measures in the new budged should encourage economic growth, such as the corporate tax reduction for small businesses from 21 per cent to 20 per cent, which goes into effect in April of 2011 and an extension of the government’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme, which will now run until March of 2011.