Remote working has enabled some businesses to carry on throughout the coronavirus lockdown but have they paid enough attention to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations)?

As more businesses open up with the easing of restrictions a combination of more stringent safety measures in workplaces and a realisation that they can carry on successfully with remote working may lead many to adopt remote working as part of their normal business practice.

GDPR was brought in in May 2018 in the UK to strengthen data protection for individuals. It imposed significant financial penalties, as much as 4% of a company’s annual turnover, for breaches and failures.

However, research by the IT support company ILUX, among 2000 remote workers during lockdown revealed that one in ten believed that their expected working practices were not GDPR compliant.

A combination of these workers using their own IT equipment and inadequate IT support from their employers at a time of crisis was partly to blame...

Who could envy a Chancellor having to deliver a Spring budget just one month into the job and in the midst of a global pandemic?

The Spring budget came after the early morning announcement of by the BoE (Bank of England) of an interest rate cut from 0.75% to 0.25%. Was this an outgoing Governor stealing an incoming Chancellor’s thunder?

With short term measures to help businesses deal with the Covid-19 consequences and others dealing with the environment, infrastructure, business taxes and addressing regional inequality the Spring budget covered them all.

The headline was a commitment to invest in infrastructure in support of the government’s commitment to ‘level up’ the economy by focusing investment on the Midlands and North: “over the next five years, we will invest more than £600bn pounds in our future prosperity”.

Many worries of SMEs were addressed by the £30bn package of short term measures to deal with the consequences of the...

Inevitably many promises were made during pre-election campaigning but how many will be delivered and what items are top of businesses’ post-election wish list?

There is no question that there are many urgent domestic issues that need tackling and were “parked” during the on-going wrangling over Britain’s referendum to leave the EU.

However, now that the so-called “party of business” has been returned with a solid majority, perhaps businesses will see some action on the issues that have left them feeling that they were overburdened and struggling to carry a heavy weight with little support.

While many business groups have been calling for the closest possible trade alignment with the EU post-Brexit it will be a year – or more – before the shape of any deal is known.

In the meantime, there are plenty of items on the business post-election wish-list that can be progressed.

Perhaps the biggest and most pressing burden needing attention is...

Research by a provider of audit, tax and consulting services has found that only 21% of board members think corporate governance is critical for a business to achieve success.

The findings by RSM also revealed that 96 per cent of company Board members it surveyed expected to see an increase in the number of criminal prosecutions of those senior executives and organisations implicated for poor risk management.

The issue of corporate governance has been under review by the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) for some time following high-profile collapses of businesses like BHS, Patisserie Valerie, Carillion and most recently Thomas Cook.

In its most recent annual report, the FRC found that that “audit quality is still not consistently reaching the necessary high standards expected”.

More than a year ago, a review of the FRC itself led by Sir John Kingman proposed the establishment of a new regulator, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority, but this was not acted upon...

The Government’s proposal to restore HMRC preferential creditor status when a business becomes insolvent is, in my view, at odds with its desire to shift the balance in the insolvency regime towards helping more businesses to survive.

In September 2018 I welcomed the Government’s newly-published proposed changes to the insolvency regime, whereby there would be a moratorium, initially 28 days, from filing papers with the courts to give still viable businesses more time to restructure or seek new investment to rescue their business free from creditor action. Consultation on this and other changes to the insolvency regime was begun in 2016.

This year, in the April 2019 budget statement, the then Chancellor Philip Hammond included a proposal to restore HMRC preferential creditor status, something that had been removed as part of the Enterprise Act in 2002. The new preferential status will apply to VAT, PAYE income tax, employee...

Some 18 months since the appointment of Small Business Commissioner Paul Uppal to tackle the problem of late payments to SME suppliers by larger companies it seems that the situation has barely improved.

In fact, according to research published in June by Purbeck Insurance Services late payment problems have actually got worse for 27% of SMEs with some 30% reporting worsening cash flow problems.

In the first quarter of this year Mr Uppal’s department has overseen the removal or suspension of some 17 companies that had signed up to the Prompt Payment Code (PPC) but failed to meet its standards.

The five removed altogether included BHP Billiton, DHL and GKN Plc. Signatories to the PPC pledge, among other things, agree to pay 95% of all supplier invoices within 60 days.

In its most recent completed case in May 2019 the Small Business Commissioner (SBC) was approached by an SME over the failure by G4S to pay it an invoice for £31,880.49 despite having contracted to do so...

It is almost a year since the new EU-wide GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) legislation was introduced and so far approaching 60,000 breaches by companies have been reported across Europe.

The UK, the Netherlands and Germany have reported the most, ranging from minor errors such as missent emails to major cyber hacks.

In the UK the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) oversees and takes action on GDPR breaches and has powers to impose massive fines for those found guilty.

In a speech in New Zealand the UK’s ICO commissioner Elizabeth Denham revealed that in the first six months of the new law her office was seeing “More complaints from the public – from 9,000 to 19,000 in a comparable six month period. Complaints about subject access, data portability and data security. All of our front line services have jumped by at least 100%. More breach reports – over 8,000 since the end of May when it became mandatory in some high risk...

Since the Cork Report in 1982 that led to the Insolvency Act 1986 (IA86) there have been a number of initiatives that have led to legislation aimed at promoting a rescue culture in UK.

The shift was from a penal approach to insolvency one based on a belief that saving insolvent companies by restructuring offers a better outcome for all concerned than the alternative of simply closing them down.

This can be achieved by putting the company into Administration, where an IP (Insolvency Practitioner) takes over the running of the company, including negotiating with creditors with the aim of saving the company or at least saving the business by selling it to new owners. In addition to benefitting secured creditors Administration also helps save jobs.

The alternative is a CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement) where the directors effectively reach agreement with creditors for revised payment terms such as “time to pay” and sometimes for a write down of the debt as a condition...

As 2018 draws to a close it makes sense to look at macro-economic trends that might inform our view of the future.

Economies tend to move in cycles from positive to negative and this is true for both national and global economies.

However, while it is true that the cycles rarely match simultaneously in different parts of the world, clearly a downturn in one region can have knock-on effects in another, as was the case in the financial crisis of 2008.

For some time now, various bodies, such as the IMF, have been predicting that another major global recession is looming. Some are even predicting that the next crash will be worse than 2008.

This is partly because the accepted wisdom is that the cycle tends to be over a 10-year period, but it is also because there appear to be headwinds building up.

A snapshot of the current state of global confidence, the global ECM (Economic Confidence Model) from July this year suggests that the USA may be moving into a serious high in 2020...

Following the collapse of the company Carillion in February this year the role of its auditors came under the spotlight and investigations were promised, notably by the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) and the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority).

The reason for this was that the business had won several large public sector contracts, among them to build two hospitals, and also because its collapse put a number of subcontractors and jobs in jeopardy. However, primarily it was because its financial health was revealed to be considerably shakier than the directors had suggested.

The company’s annual audit had been carried out by KPMG, one of the big four auditors, and in March 2017 it had expressed no concern over reported profits of £150m, even though four months later these proved to be illusory. Perhaps they may have been reassured by the company’s ‘internal auditor’, Deloitte, which might also be looked into since it may have involved helping...