Business News President’s Focus
This month’s President’s Focus is by James Blackman, the current president of Lichfield and Tamworth Chamber. James is managing partner of website design and digital marketing firm Cocoonfxmedia Ltd, which is based in Lichfield. One of his key policies during his term as president is to address the issue of late payment, particularly where small businesses are concerned. His emails say it all – they are emblazoned with this message, in very large letters: ‘We support pay in 30 days’.
Lichfield and Tamworth have a good mixture of different types of businesses – however, they all share the same issue, and that is poor cashflow. That’s why I have made it my mission as president of Lichfield and
Tamworth Chamber to make businesses aware of our council’s main policy, which is ‘pay in 30 days’. I am a business owner myself, and we have had to hold back on our
growth plans due to late payment of invoices. It is critical – and more so than ever
with ‘Brexit’ – for businesses to protect their cashflow. For my business, at any given point, we are owed enough to employ a high-end developer with a salary of £25,000 - if we were paid on time. This would allow us to double
production and increase our service offering. An estimated 80 per cent of small businesses are
owed money, and on average small businesses have to wait estimated 72 days on average, whereas large corporations an estimated 47 days. That’s £26bn which is owed – not only that, an
estimated 50,000 businesses are put out of business due to late payment. The government is now starting to shine a
spotlight on businesses which take in excess of 60 days to pay what they owed. However, there is still no rock solid legislation to make it mandatory that payments are made within 30 days. If anything, the government should do
more about this, as £26 billion represents a lot of uncollected VAT and Corporation Tax. It shouldn’t take 60 days to get paid -
technology these days allows you to manage the paper trail quicker and more efficiently. As a business community, we can make our voices heard, if we join together and all commit to paying our suppliers faster and without excuses. I call upon the Lichfield & Tamworth members to sign up to the ‘pay in 30 days’ campaign. We have 42 businesses signed up so far and we would like a minimum of 160 businesses. Both Lichfield and Tamworth MPs are
both committed to support the campaign, we just need more businesses on board - and we need the full support of the membership. If you would like any more information on
the campaign, please visit the Lichfield and Tamworth page on the Great Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website, or you can contact myself or any of our committee members.
10 CHAMBERLINK June 2017
James Blackman, president of Lichfield and Tamworth Chamber
‘It shouldn’t take 60 days to get paid - technology these days allows you to manage the paper trail quicker and more efficiently’
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