North East small firms have chance to apply for funding: Small firms have been given the chance to claim a slice of £1m to boost their export sales. NEBusiness.co.uk is reporting that Market Accelerator, a UK Trade & Investment North East Service, is offering to make 100% investments of between £20,000 and £30,000 to SMEs that meet its criteria and can apply within a two-week window which opens today.
UK retailers facing tough decade, Item Club predicts: UK retailers could be facing many years of poor sales growth, an economic think tank has said. The report from Ernst & Young’s Item Club, being reported by the BBC claims that consumer spending is expected to rise by only 2% a year in the 10 years up to 2020.
Why small offices are no barrier to big projects: Many business advisors talk about small business collaboration and how small businesses can be just rhetoric, however Citywire spent some time with Jim Clancy of Access Wealth Management, at his office in Wylam, a ranquil village near Newcastle upon Tyne seeing collaboration and large scale projects being run from their two portakabin office.
Taxman targets restaurants in clampdown on tax dodgers: HM Revenue & Customs says London restaurants dodging tax will be contacted in the next few weeks before it rolls out its investigations to Scotland and the North West. The Telegraph is reporting that specialist teams have been set up to investigate businesses, including restraurants and their suppliers, in a “intensive bursts of compliance activity” to claw back some of the £7BN
