Partner Article

Budget Comments from Carlton and Co

Over all we feel that this is a positive Budget for business given the Chancellor is focusing on deficit reduction. The changes to personal and corporation tax are all positive steps in the right direction and set the tone for future budgets and send a strong message to attract investors into the UK.

The two mains areas that we see opportunities are;

• £270M Growing Places Fundwhich is an area of interest for Carlton & Co Investments and our work in placing institutional funds into the housing sector.

• Enterprise Loansfor young people to start their own business - which has the potential to link to the Carlton Enterprise HUB and co-worker space.

Growing Places Fund

The potential here is to leverage this £270M with institutional investment and multiply this to deliver £1BN - £1.5BN of regeneration projects. These projects create much needed new homes and provide a boost to the construction sector and local economy. The planning reforms are desperately needed as our planning system is painfully slow and time consuming and is not conducive to support the delivery and volume of new homes that the market needs and the funds want to invest at scale. Nevertheless, the business opportunity is to partner with Housing Association Registered Providers and Local Enterprise Partnership’s in order to access the institutional finance to leverage the fund.

Enterprise Loans Young People

Any support for young people to start their own business is a positive step forward with unemployment rates at 14% for the 18-25 year olds. The Carlton Enterprise HUB is a strand of our business that assists SME’s and start-ups, many of which are finding it difficult to access funds.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Norm Peterson .