For many small businesses in the UK, April has become a predictable pressure point.
Category: Columns
Columns, blogs and opinion from some of the UKs leading business opinion makers and entrepreneurs and small business owners
Easter on the high street: bunny ears, empty tills and a hospitality sector running on fumes
Post-Easter trading data tells a familiar story. Richard Alvin on a high street propped up by bank-holiday spikes and a hospitality industry running on the smell of an empty fryer.
Trump’s tariffs are squeezing British exporters – and Westminster is asleep at the wheel
A year of Trump tariffs has bitten UK exporters hard. Richard Alvin says Britain needs a coherent transatlantic strategy, not another envoy in a nice suit.
The non-doms have packed their suitcases and the tax base is going with them
A year after the non-dom regime was scrapped, says Richard Alvin, the data is in. The capital, the giving and the City salaries that have left town tell their own story.
Happy New Tax Year: same kicking, slightly higher boot
6 April brings higher employer NICs, the rates revaluation, and IHT bear-traps for family firms. Richard Alvin: in Britain, ‘growth’ is something done to you, not for you.
British manufacturing is being electrocuted to death, and we are calling it net zero
UK industrial energy is four times the US. Richard Alvin on the slow strangulation of British manufacturing — and the policy choices we are dressing up as climate leadership.
AI is quietly making graduates redundant: we will regret this inside a decade
Big consultancies are slashing graduate intakes. Richard Alvin warns Britain’s talent pipeline is breaking, and that the next generation of partners and CFOs has to come from somewhere.
Imminent changes to Statutory Sick Pay: What employers need to know
In a recent Acas survey, employers and employees were asked which three changes in the Employment Rights Act 2025 would have the biggest impact in their workplace.
The Apprenticeship Levy is broken, and the ‘Growth and Skills’ rebrand won’t mend it
A year after Labour’s ‘Growth and Skills’ rebrand, says Richard Alvin, the levy still funnels money to MBA-flavoured consultancies while the real apprenticeships die quietly.
After the Spring Statement, Britain’s businesses know exactly what to expect: nothing
The red box has been and gone. Richard Alvin reacts to Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement — and why Britain’s small firms have, again, been treated as the audience, not the answer.
Reeves’s Spring Statement: brace yourselves, the begging bowl is on its way round again
The Chancellor’s Spring Statement is a week away. Richard Alvin on what Britain’s SMEs are bracing for, and the four moves Rachel Reeves should make if she is serious about growth.
International Women’s Day: spare us the lanyards and look at who’s actually got the cheque book
Another IWD of pastel-pink panels while female founders still get a fraction of UK venture capital. Richard Alvin: the gap is in capital allocation, not breakfast events.
Lent, Dry January, Sober October: when did the British pub become collateral damage in the wellness wars?
Mocktails won’t pay the gas bill. Richard Alvin on how Britain’s wellness wars are quietly sinking the public house — and the case for treating the pub as national infrastructure.
The Government’s entrepreneurship adviser says we don’t need more restaurants. She’s wrong and here’s why
Zoe Adjey, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Hospitality and Tourism, Department of Innovation and Management, Royal Docks School of Business and Law gives her opinion on the Government’s entrepreneurship adviser, Alex Depledge, declaring that Britain does not “need any more restaurants”
Building Sustainable Growth Through a Strategic Portfolio
In many organisations, portfolio is still viewed as a list of products and services – something to be expanded in the hope that more choice will unlock more opportunity. In reality, sustainable growth rarely comes from volume alone.
