Only a fifth of small British businesses exposed to Brexit have prepared for the UK leaving without a deal, according to a survey that shows many vulnerable companies are still ill-equipped for upheaval with only weeks before the scheduled departure.
Average costs among companies that have made initial preparations have reached as much as £3,000, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) revealed in the first UK-wide survey of small businesses’ Brexit planning.
More than a third of the over 1,000 companies who completed the survey said Brexit has already caused either temporarily or permanently reduced profitability, with a similar number having to invest in stockpiling ahead of October 31.
But the bigger worry for the government will be the lack of preparations among smaller businesses as prime minister Boris Johnson refuses to back down on the pledge to take the UK out of the EU with or without a deal in spite of opposition from MPs.
The FSB, which has 165,000 members with an average of seven employees, said that almost 40 per cent of small companies would be negatively affected by a no-deal departure — and of those only one in five has planned or prepared for disruption. Part of the low level of preparedness is because of uncertainty in knowing what to plan for: nearly two-thirds said they felt unable to plan. [...]
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