1 million small businesses not supported

FSB: Support overlooks 1m small firms The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has warned that a million small businesses and sole traders "overlooked" for emergency coronavirus support need assistance, with one in five small companies missing out due to the way assistance has been targeted. An FSB poll of more than a thousand small business owners saw one in five said they have received no financial help from the Government amid the pandemic, while separate FSB research suggests one in two firms have not been able to gain access to a cash grant and only one in twenty had received discretionary help from their local authority. The federation has urged the Chancellor to extend cash grants and business rates reliefs and called for the threshold at which businesses start paying rates to be permanently increased. FSB national chairman Mike Cherry said that while too many small firms have been left out of support measures, “it’s not too late to bring those left out into the fold."