I can’t remember the detail beyond seeing inflation below 5% in the 80s from the high teen figures inherited. I’m sure there’s a graph somewhere but I couldn’t find one that goes further back than 89 with a quick Google search and my wife is hassling me to go to an “apero”. Happy Googling.

whilst as a business we are staying in credit the area we work in north manchester bury rochdale oldham has taken a significant hit and is not getting any better virtually every suburban pub is gone most independent shops have done the same unemployment is rising..

Binners …

Just as a point of interest, the creditor who put themselves into insolvency, then pre-packed and re opened they didn’t happen to use the same or similar trading names did they ?

Had a very similar experience ourselves, with the director doing just that (which is perfectly legal with the intention of business salvage) BUT there are very strong phoenix laws under the Insolvency act which prohibits the use of any previous trading names etc. Abuse of this is a Criminal offence by the director resulting in full liability of all debts, as well as criminal charges including fines and imprisonment.

We bought that to the attention of the Director who had pocketed our possessions and lo and behold payments were made.

Also worth looking at your old sales contracts (assuming you have already) as to when ownership of the work done was passed to them. Normally this would be stipulated as being on receipt of payment, in which case you could look to re-posses the active website (or demand payment for same) Can you re-posses a website ????

Regards the economy, very similar boat to Binners, holding onto what was a solid business by the skin of our teeth, due mainly to cash-flow rather than turnover.

With credit being so tight amongst the business community what used to be produced on 30-90 terms now gets paid for upfront. Banks certainly are not interested in business investments, nor lending. To the contrary we lost our overdraft facility, and had to put down substantial deposits to retain streamline and retail finance.

Small firm loans have all but disappeared, and product development and innovation is going out the window.

The only reason we keep fighting on is the employees we have, who we care about a great deal. We have been able to weather the worst of it by selling off personal assets, and thankfully sublet a portion of our business premises.

Our Lease holder also came to the table with a significant reduction in rent in order to retain us which again, has got us through the worse of it. Collective arrangements such as this are to the benefit of all.

Unlike the RBS who forced one of our competitors into insolvency in order to obtain the premises that were held as debenture. Similar to us they withdrew their overdraft facility pushing them to the brink despite remaining profitable in trade. Not fans of them all.

The CBD around us would have over 50% vacancy rates, so a lot of business has already folded unfortunately.

Its certainly not a lost cause, and we have undergone extensive streamlining and cutbacks but I am confident that things will improve.