Just get on with it

Chief executive of the North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry Bryan Carnes tells bosses – just get on with it.

I've been going to meetings this week and talking to our members, but I don’t get this sense of all-pervading doom – in spite of the Governor of the Bank of England saying we are heading into recession and our own quarterly survey identifying falling orders and confidence. The reality is most people just get on with it.

Some businesses inevitably are going to be casualties. They are the businesses which are in the wrong market at the wrong time. For example, who would want to be an estate agent in the current market or a solicitor whose main source of income is conveyancing work?

There will be others who do extremely well, and they say the best time to start a business is during a recession. There is still plenty of work out there, we just need those sectors with spending power, such as councils, the Government and other public agencies, to keep spending.

Talking of the public sector, Newcastle Borough Council has announced it is going to pay small businesses within two weeks of invoice to help us over these more difficult times. That’s a very welcome move and other councils need to follow suit.

I’ve heard some commentators say it’s a bit rich the business community calling on the public sector for help when we’re usually asking them to leave us alone. But the truth is we’ve never asked the Government to leave us alone. We’ve asked for them to stop over-legislating us and to stop taxing us to death.

And the Bank of England can help. We need a full one per cent reduction in interest rates because cash is becoming a real problem and businesses will need access to decent-value loans and overdrafts.

Until then, my message to our members remains: get out there and find the business.