With the Bank of England raising interest rates on Thursday to a 15-year high of 5.25% and warning the cost of borrowing will remain high for two years, many small businesses are worried about their futures.
Andrew Crook, the president of the National Federation of Fish Fryers and owner of Skippers of Euxton in Lancashire
“The main concern about rising interest rates for fish and chip shop owners is customers not being able to spend what they used to. We are seeing some people trading down, some people who would have bought to two fish and chips are buying one large and sharing it between them, which is slightly cheaper for them.
“The big fear is that after the summer holidays, we go into winter and with energy costs going up, people will start seeing their smart metres going up and will not have as much disposable income. It’s very hard to plan in business because you don’t know where you’re going to be one month to the next.
“We don’t like putting prices up, but unfortunately many businesses have had to in the past year. The longer this goes on, the harder it becomes to absorb it. Without some sort of change, small businesses are just treading water because we don’t have the borrowing power.”
Jonathan Samuels, the CEO of Octane Capital in north London, which supplies bridging loans for the property market
“Everyone obviously wants inflation to come down as quickly as possible, but you don’t want to crash the economy simultaneously. The ideal is to have what looks like the Americans have managed to achieve, which is this soft landing that has brought inflation down to about 3% but at the same time the economy is still growing as unemployment hasn’t gone up.
“If we had been as bold, we too would be close to achieving the much-heralded soft landing and would be far closer to interest rates falling than we are now.
“While an unpopular opinion, it could be argued that the Bank of England hasn’t been daring enough in their decision to increase rates again today and really another 0.5% increase was needed to tame inflation. It’s far better to have a short period of pain brought about by higher interest rates, rather than a sustained period of significant economic turmoil and uncertainty.”
Rachel Peers, the owner of La Beau Fleurs in Woolston, Cheshire
“Interest rates going up again is quite a worrying trend for us. My particular business is split between the shop, which is very much retail, and the wedding side. They’re both feeling it to varying degrees at the minute. Our clients are definitely thinking more carefully about what they spend, which is having an impact.
“People are looking at more value options and not making as many impulse buys. All small businesses are feeling it, I have a lot of peers I talk to and no matter the sector, people are feeling the pinch.
“For example, on the wedding side, we have three massive weddings coming up but this is legacy work, booked 18-24 months ago. It’s the roll-on effect interest rates rises will have on us because if people are nervous about booking a wedding now, my projection for next year looks very different to this year. People are nervous about making big financial commitments over the next couple of years, I think.”
Matt Culley, a farmer and agricultural contractor in Hampshire and chair of the NFU crops board
“I need to purchase new machinery and the interest rate quoted to me has gone up to 9% so I’m going to have to hold off until rates come down. It means the old machinery is going to have to run on, which means I have to spend more money on maintaining an old machine.
“The trouble is the lead times are quite long on machinery purchases so I will have to order it by the end of the month to get it on the farm in at least three months’ time. With these interest rates, I could take a gamble and say well I’m going to chuck as much money into it as I can, but that’s just one piece of machinery.
“With our industry, my rates as an agricultural contractor that I charge to farmers for the work I do are fixed and I can’t do anything about them. Any rises in terms of interest rates, I can’t do anything about it and that’s eating into my profit. And as a farmer, I can’t sell my grain for any more than the market will pay me. We cannot pass on those extra costs.”
