UK small business resilience to disruption surveyed
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- Published: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 09:46
More than 550,000 small businesses in the UK may have been forced to halt trading due to a disruption in the last two years, according to new research by small business insurer Direct Line for Business ; and the average cost of keeping a small business afloat while unable to trade for two weeks is estimated to be £8,775.
The average small business believes that it would last around eight months and three weeks if it were forced to halt trading, with sole traders (nine months, one week) faring better than microbusinesses – businesses employing fewer than 10 people - (nine months) and small businesses (six months, two weeks).
Of those companies that have had to cease trading due to business disruption, the period of shutdown lasted, on average, more than three months. This will be of particular concern for the one in five (21 percent) small businesses that claim that they would not be able to survive if their businesses had to cease trading for more than a month.
Reduction in profit (48 percent), reduction in revenue (42 percent), loss of customers (39 percent) and putting personal money into the business (32 percent) were found to be the most common impacts of an interruption in trading on small business owners.
