Bristol firms are not happy with the level of local business support they are receiving from government, it was announced today. The research, conducted by YouGov, found that 70% of Bristol SMEs polled do not feel there has been enough local support. It also highlighted that many local SMEs are still experiencing financial difficulties with 91% seeing the UK as not out of the recession yet, despite official figures otherwise.
Before next week's emergency budget, Bristol firms polled are firmly in opposition to the planned hike in national insurance. When asked what one thing they would like to see from the new coalition government, 37% of SMEs wanted to see the rise in national insurance scrapped. A further 13% were desperate for tax payments to continue to be delayed through extending the government's business payment support service.
The research polled 46 small businesses in Bristol that are using invoice finance for their corporate funding and was commissioned by the Asset Based Finance Association. Local firms were stark in their criticism of the old Labour government with 67% of firms believing that the Labour government had not done enough to help businesses during the credit crunch. Only 17% of firms thought that Labour had done as much as they could to help.
Access to finance for Bristol SMEs is still a critical issue, with 65% responding that their funding environment is either very hard or relatively hard, with only 2% seeing access to finance as being very easy.
This latest YouGov research of firms using invoice finance comes just days before the coalition Government is due to announce the abolition of many Regional Development Agencies. The results come ahead of next week's emergency budget announcement in which more spending cuts are expected to be made.
Kate Sharp, chief executive of the Asset Based Finance Association, said: "For firms in Bristol it's clear that access to finance is still really important. While our members are actively lending to Bristol SMEs, it will be critical that the emergency budget looks to help them more, by extending government initiatives such as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme. And with 70% of firms feeling that they haven't received enough local support, scrapping regional development agencies might not prove popular with many small firms too. It would seem that there is still some way to go before restoring business confidence in Bristol."