What's in it for me?

Like many practitioners, I am poring over the news reports to see if there was anything in the Chancellor's autumn statement that I need to communicate to clients.

There seem to be two aspects to this. On the one hand, George Osborne came up with a few useful announcements - the extension of small business rate relief, cancelling the impending fuel duty rise, a hundred quid off our water bills down here in the South West, the Bristol Link Road gets the go-ahead which should make it easier to get to the airport, and my retired parents are going to get a decent rise in their state pensions.

On the other hand, economists and reporters were quick to cut through the political sound bites to point out that the Chancellor's confidence that we will avoid another recession is more or less just semantics - medium-term growth of less than 1% is only a cat's whisker short of an actual recession. And if the Euro collapses, all these forecasts will be totally useless anyway! The apparent good news of huge infrastructure investment, etc should be welcomed with caution - the small print will reveal exactly how and more importantly WHEN these projects are expected to go ahead, and some of them are unlikely to start before the next general election, so they won't help any of my clients in the immediate future.

As for the banks being persuaded to lend to small and medium sized businesses with a 1% interest discount, I can't believe he said that. Small businesses generally can't borrow ANYTHING from banks at the moment, they simply are not open for business. The interest rates being offered are not a problem if you can't borrow, so cutting them is a pointless exercise as far as my clients are concerned!

The new Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme looks interesting, at least it starts next year and with 50% tax relief it will encourage some entrepreneurs to invest, but it will only be useful to those with their own money.

The real headline is that we're in for a tough few years, the recession is not over and could easily affect small businesses adversely for another five years or more, so former optimism about coming out of recession next year can be forgotten. Our task is to help clients manage their businesses to survive and grow in the face of such adversity, on the assumption that government and the banks will offer no effective help whatsoever.

Current growth area in our practice at the moment? Banking contingency planning - helping clients to put together a survival plan in case their bank withdraws or significantly reduces borrowing facilities. You'd be surprised how many clients are looking at this very seriously at the moment down here in the South West, and these tend to be businesses which are relatively successful too. The others are just keeping their heads down!