COVID costs making Staffordshire and Cheshire businesses 'unsustainable'
Owners say they might not be able to afford to pay themselves for the rest of the year
Making businesses across Staffordshire and Cheshire Covid-secure is costing smaller firms time and money, with many owners worried they will not be able to afford to pay themselves a salary in the next six months, a study suggests.
Owners of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) say maintaining safety measures is significantly impacting their business.
"A lot of the adjustments that businesses have had to make includes using disposable equipment that is very expensive, and in many cases they're having to pass that cost on to their customers. So I think everybody is seeing the impact of this." said Karen Woolley, Development Manager at the Staffordshire and West Midlands Federation of Small Businesses.
"The uncertainty is a real sort of pinch point here, having made those really large adjustments at the beginning of the crisis.
"We've got non-essential retail, we've got personal care businesses, all of those, it's been very difficult for them, because they won't have been in a position to recoup any of those costs that they had to outlay at the very beginning and possibly additional adjustments they've had to make through the year."
A survey of more than 1,000 SMEs found that one in four spend over an hour a day making sure their workplace is Covid-secure.
Small business lender Iwoca said its study also found that one in three SMEs have lost customers and sales since before the pandemic and one in four have fewer staff.
Iwoca chief operating officer Seema Desai said: "As restrictions are being eased, many small business owners are chomping at the bit to recover their full potential.''
Around two in five respondents said they worry they will not be able to afford to pay themselves a salary in the next six months.
"We're constantly being faced with this uncertainty" added Karen Woolley.
"But in terms of the costs involved, if you are a business, say in personal care where you're having to use an awful lot of disposable equipment, like the aprons and various things that you use, just to see one customer - that cost is definitely going to have to be passed on."
It comes as the potential delay to the easing of coronavirus restrictions on the 21st of July is being seen as a major blow for many firms.
Rob Downes is also from the Federation of Small Businesses, in Manchester, he said the next week is going to be make or break for many firms:
"The businesses that have opened pre June 21st have spent quite a lot of money on making their premises COVID secure." he said.
"It goes beyond just sanitiser and that kind of thing. The staff have to be trained, you have to make sure that's part of the culture within the companies."
"The businesses that were looking to June 21st, they really were looking to that day because the idea was that there would be no restrictions. No face masks, no social distancing, everything was gonna be back to normal for those businesses.
"That was because they couldn't run with those restrictions in place, a nightclub can't run social distancing - it's just impossible! Imagine dancing around the nightclub with a mask on. It just won't wash.
"So that's the worry, if we're going to have a different flavour of easing of lockdown come June 21st, that makes it even more difficult for our nightclubs for example.
"We've got a lot to hear from the government in the next week and really businesses could have done with that information sooner."
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