Senior Yorkshire business leaders back family business manifesto

Business from across Yorkshire are supporting the launch of the first-ever Manifesto by Family Business UK.

Taking The Long-Term View which lists “policies to unleash the potential of UK family business sector”, has received support from business leaders including Thomas Martin, Chairman of Arco Ltd and Chairman of Hull and E. Yorkshire Business Engagement Board.

A number of family businesses based in the Yorkshire are members of Family Business UK, including Arco, Betty’s Pavers, Shepherds Group, Portakabin, Ramsden International and Rudding Park.

The Manifesto launch comes after a survey of FBUK members showed a majority of family businesses surveyed think the Government is not doing enough to help support businesses with long-term investment planning.

The survey, conducted with the Family Business UK membership - made up of some of the largest family businesses, including household names and global companies - found that a significant majority of members felt that the Government has been too focused on addressing short-term issues and wasn’t doing enough to provide stability for family businesses by delivering a long-term strategy.

Overall, a majority of family businesses were looking to increase their investments over the next five years. Over half said initiatives such as the Full Expensing regime had provided some investment support and urged the Government to make the scheme permanent in the upcoming Autumn Statement. The survey also found that family firms said not having access to the right skills was one of the major barriers they currently face.

These insights have helped inform the new recommendations of the first-ever Manifesto by Family Business UK. Published today, the document sets out a list of key policy recommendations that can provide “enormous potential of the family business sector to support economic growth, family businesses, their workforce, and society at large”.

Chief Executive of Family Business UK, Neil Davy, said the Government has a clear opportunity to unlock the potential of the family business sector and that focusing on the following policy areas will help stimulate and sustain economic growth and prosperity and build healthy communities.

Family Business UK believes that for too long, political, industry and business decision-making has taken a restricted approach to investment decisions that responds to the priorities of non-family business PLCs, whose priority is to meet shareholder demands for short-term returns on investments.

The UK needs to formulate a growth strategy that encourages and incentivises businesses to focus on longer-term investment opportunities and returns for stakeholders, the environment, and the UK’s role and place in the wider world.

Chief Executive of Family Business UK, Neil Davy, said: “In the UK, we are sitting on an enormous resource of entrepreneurialism in the form of our family business sector. Family businesses make up 90 per cent of the UK’s total private sector firms, employing 14 million people and contributing over £200 billion through tax receipts each year alone.

“This manifesto represents our offer to policymakers, informed by the UK’s family business community and their everyday experience of doing business in helping to solve the big challenges of today and tomorrow.”

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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