Small business-friendly measures become law

Measures designed to make the UK “the best place in the world to start and grow a business” have become law, in the shape of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act.

The wide-ranging act paves the way for businesses to get improved access to finance; faster cheque payment times, greater exposure of poor payers and helpful reductions to red tape.

Squarely aimed at levelling the playing field for small businesses, the act also contains measures to make insolvency law simpler and zero-hours contracts less abusive.

Even more helpful to freelancers and micro-enterprise, the act requires all companies with more than 250 employees to declare on a website their performance on paying their small suppliers.

There are also provisions requiring the taxman to make available non-financial VAT registration data (such as name and contact details) for specific purposes to qualifying parties.

But the data can only be used for a small range of purposes such as credit scoring and fraud prevention, and it cannot be used for other purposes, like cold calling or marketing.