This month in localbusinessadviser, Emma Jones outlines the benefits of running a business from home. Emma is the founder of Enterprise Nation, and a home business evangelist. When I interviewed her for the article, she explained to me that she felt the accessibility of web-based technology is driving massive growth in the home business sector – it’s cheap, easy to obtain and use and enables you to promote yourself affordably to millions of potential customers.
Her point is underpinned by statistics. In late October, Enterprise Nation published the Home Business Report, which has some fascinating findings, including:
- there are 2.1 million home-based businesses in the UK. The sector has a turnover of £364 billion and accounts for 28 per cent of UK employment.
- sixty per cent of new businesses start at home
- 1,400 new businesses start from home each week
- 70,000 people make a full-time living from ebay alone
- the growth in home businesses is greatest among mothers, the over-50s and people in their 20s – precisely the groups who struggled to find the time or get the financial backing you needed before the Internet boom.
Before speaking to Emma, I had no idea the home business sector was expanding so fast – too fast, she claims, for the Government and regional development agencies, who for the most part have yet to start providing significant specialist backing or explicitly mention home business support plans in their regional economic strategies.
“There has been very limited support for home business start-ups, which is why we wrote the report,” Emma said when she launched the report. “We identified pockets of activity in the report, but we’re calling on the Government to consider our ‘Ten point action plan’ that would see home business encouraged yet further.”
The ten-point plan includes clarification of tax implications for home businesses; planning policies that incorporate live/work schemes; more easily available grant funding; and investment in infrastructure that supports home-based businesses – such as the Enterprise HQ in Shrewsbury, which provides commercial meeting and selling space for rural entrepreneurs.
Given the wealth generated by home-run businesses, and the load they remove from our overloaded transport and planning systems, it makes sense to promote them. The West Midlands and the North West are the only two regions presently supporting significant home business projects. They are also the two regions seeing the most rapid growth in the number of self-employed working from home. Surely no coincidence?
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