Bernard Ginns: Business needs backing, not red tape, from the authorities

as comfort food goes, the smoked haddock with bubble and squeak served in the Lord Rodney pub of Keighley is hard to beat.

Smothered in creamy mustard sauce and topped with a poached egg, it was a wonderful lunch for a hungry journalist.

The topic of conversation was less than comforting though, as you shall see.

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I was in town for a meeting with a managing director and the talk turned to growth and how to nurture it.

This is a man who has recently spent a significant sum of money investing in his business to make it fit for the future.

He also had to spend a significant amount of time negotiating with planning officers from an unnamed local authority.

At every turn it seemed, there was a rule or regulation that he had to navigate, costing valuable time and money that few of us can afford in times like these.

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His sense of frustration was palpable as he described the trials and tribulations involved in 21st century business investment.

Concluding as I finished off the fish with one hand and scribbling down notes with the other, he revealed his own plan for growth.

It goes like this: “Take the spite out of the tax system. Refuse planning departments the ability to add conditions. It’s either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And encourage chief executives of councils to outsource as much as possible.”

The UK tax system has become intensely complicated and involved in the last decade or so. It’s tempting to believe that certain additions were motivated by the politics of envy.

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Planning departments certainly do hold a lot of power and often take a long time to exercise it. Removing a chunk of this power might indeed help business get on with investment.

And as for outsourcing, local authorities have enormous budgets and large workforces enjoying benefits that most in the private sector gave up long ago.

In times of hardship, it would make good sense to strip down these bloated institutions and hand the work instead to businesses that carry out the same functions. Staff needn’t lose their jobs; they could transfer to the new service provider.

In all, an interesting, if radical, view. But ask any business person if he or she feels like they have the total support from the local authority and the answer will inevitably be negative.

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Last week, I asked the Master Cutler, Bill Speirs, if he thought Sheffield City Council was doing enough to support investment, particularly on the planning front.

“Yes, at chief executive level,” he replied. “The issue is at nitty-gritty ground level.” Then he added: “There are sometimes issues that should be resolved, have not been resolved but will be resolved.

“We need new companies coming in. New companies want premises, roads, housing and education for their children and we need to streamline that process. If we don’t we will shoot ourselves in the foot.

“There’s the will at the top to make that happen and I’m sure it will work its way through.”

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More diplomatic perhaps than our anonymous MD at lunch but the challenges are the same as in West Yorkshire.

Up in North Yorkshire it’s a similar story. Emma Watts, development manager at the Federation of Small Businesses, emailed yesterday to say: “This Government has said it wants small businesses to help lead the economy out of recession but it’s done very little to assist. Take farming for example, planning policy can prove daunting if not prohibitive for farms wanting to diversify.

“The time and effort that businesses have to spend on the applications and more often than not the appeals can often make the process highly expensive.

“The authorities seem to forget that farms look after the countryside but without being able to generate an income they cannot survive let alone manage the countryside or employ people.

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“Members say to us that they get the feeling that the planning authorities do not understand that creating jobs requires investment but these businesses cannot make the investment and the jobs won’t be created if the small business are not helped and encouraged to create them.”

A clear message, then, to the chief executives and planning departments of local authorities. Don’t stand in the way of investment.

n Here is a challenge to readers.

Watch Charles Ferguson’s excellent new documentary on the financial crisis, Inside Job, in which he clinically exposes those responsible for the current state we’re in, namely the chief executives past and present of the main global investment banks and the captive political establishment, and try not to feel anger that not one person has been put in jail, let alone face a fraud charge, as a result of the massive global pyramid scheme that was the sub-prime mortgage lending racket. Out now on DVD.