Last year saw businesses closing at the rate of around 100 a day, so it’s hardly surprising that the business community is being cautious about what is in store this year.

There may be signs that the economy is improving, but confidence among entrepreneurs remains shaky.

It is against this background that I am launching the Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy (EBA) to provide a forum where budding entrepreneurs can learn from the experts, network with their peers, and make their ideas a reality.

People may question the timing, particularly if 2010 turns out to be as volatile as forecasters suggest, but it will be a make or break year for a number of companies and I believe the academy will be capable of helping the seasoned business owner as well as up-and-coming entrepreneurs to weather the storms.

The academy will have the backing of high-profile entrepreneurs and experts and will provide the tools and a wealth of advice to those owners wanting a deeper insight into developing a successful company.

Yes I will be closely involved and will, for example, be talking about the techniques I employ to maximise sales, and the know-how to turn any business around.

I want the academy to provide an invaluable experience to emerging entrepreneurs, current owners of SMEs, professionals re-launching their careers, and ultimately, the man or woman with an idea, and the courage to make it a reality.

I was interested in a recent Dun & Bradstreet survey indicating that 90pc of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) fail because business owners lack all round knowledge about how to run the enterprise.

These disturbing findings show that the UK’s entrepreneurs still need a helping hand and with this in mind, I’d imagine any form of advice would be welcomed with open arms. After all, what entrepreneur can honestly say he or she knows it all?

The problem with being the boss is that there is no one to guide you and there’s a preconception rooted within entrepreneurs that asking for help signals failure.

It’s actually quite the opposite. Asking for advice in fact reflects a smart mind – one that will go far.

Even I’m still learning. At the age of 40 I went to Harvard to study the Advanced Management Program, a course that has proved invaluable. I’m still making use of the content.

It just goes to show you can never stop learning – irrespective of age or where you are in your career.

The EBA launches with the first event on March 20 when myself and my team of “Millionaire Mentors” will be making the first presentations.

There are still some spaces available. Details at www.the-eba.com

* James Caan is founder and chief executive of Hamilton Bradshaw and founded and ran recruitment group Alexander Mann between 1985 and 2002. Please send your questions to askjames@telegraph.co.uk

Nothing like a bit of blue-sky thinking to brighten business prospects. The General Election season is quickly gathering pace. The political parties are engaged in either leading with or misleading about their ultimate post-election intentions and plans.

Business organisations and lobbyists are mulling over the contents of their own manifestos. They face the same dilemma as the politicians, how to handle what could be a double-dip recession at a time when government spending and borrowing is out of control.

Business will be on the receiving end of whatever unpleasant tax or spending medicine is doled out, while the new administration will be looking to the industrial and commercial sectors to deliver the growth the economy so badly needs. Some task.

But it is not too late for business to go on the offensive and take the opportunity for a bit of blue-sky thinking in their wish list to the politicos.

The British Chambers of Commerce has taken a modest stab by suggesting a reversal of last year’s reduction in VAT and increase in National Insurance contributions (NICs).

It wants next year’s increase in NICs abandoned and a one percentage point increase in VAT substituted. In short, shift the tax-raising burden from employers and employees to consumers.

The arithmetic works in favour of business, representing a saving of £5bn against an additional £4.5bn yield from VAT – but as a well-known jingle points out, every little helps.

There is of course an element of special pleading in the Chambers’ submission and arguments for shifting the basis of one particular tax yield. Nonetheless, the suggestion marks a departure from manifesto convention.

Reductions in government spending along with less red tape and tax relief for the small businessman have traditionally been the staple diet in the business submissions around election time to the political parties.

There is scope for variations on the BCC theme. The credit crisis and the flow of so-called initiatives from Government after the banks put up the shutters to help small businesses raise finance was a combination of a knee-jerk reaction and do-goodery.

In the second year – or maybe third for some – of the credit crisis there are lessons to be learned from the failure of some of the schemes and the rules attached to them without producing another complex set of arrangements.

The age of the “big idea” may have been consigned to the “something to forget” in the history books, but perhaps the time is ripe for something more practical like giving small businesses a tax holiday to encourage more investment, start-ups and job creation.

The small business organisations and lobbies might also achieve more if they temporarily, at least, formed a coalition to make a joint submission. There should be strength in numbers.

http://www.workfromhomeinuk.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/

Just when you thought it was safe to come out into the open. As if it weren’t enough that the euro is crumbling, that the banking sector is still vulnerable; that Britain is steeling itself for its biggest spending squeeze in living memory, along comes Barclays Capital with some really bad news.

Having slid its slide rule over Britain’s demographics, it is warning that the real threat to the economy is not the fallout from the current financial mess, but the weight our ageing population will impose on the budget.

It is hardly a new warning: economists were getting hot under the collar about this decades ago. Back in the early 1990s it was all the OECD and IMF ever talked about. In a few years, they said, the baby boomers will retire and before you know it Britain, and for that matter most of the Western world, will see the proportion of its population in a retirement balloon.

The consequences are depressingly predictable: the budget deficit will climb higher and higher as those pensioners collect their retirement and medical benefits – all to be paid by a shrinking core of taxpayers.

The difference between then and now is that the squeeze is finally starting – this year, according to Tim Bond of Barclays. The bank forecasts that in a relatively short space of time, the interest rate on long-dated gilts – which in turn determine interest rates throughout the economy – will rise from around 4pc to well over 10pc. It is hard to overemphasise the significance of this sea change. Put simply, for the next decade, life will become increasingly expensive for the average household, squeezing ever deeper into their incomes. Standards of living will diminish.

The analogies with the financial crisis are plain to see: for years, Britons have lived beyond their means, financing it by, in effect, borrowing off future generations, whether through debt, by creating unrealistic pension obligations or social welfare systems that simply cannot be funded without an ever-greater contribution from the working population. Demographics is destiny, they say, and the statistics suggest the UK is destined for a major squeeze.

As if evidence were needed, it was provided in graphic form yesterday by BT, which admitted its pension deficit has now risen to a staggering £9bn. Shocking as this is, it is only a microcosmic example of what has happened across the UK and other Western nations over past decades. Once the financial crisis is well and truly over, the time will soon come for Governments to work out how on earth they intend to honour these unwise contracts without consigning vast numbers of their population to economic stagnation.

http://www.askhowtoearn.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/

How bloggers and new media will make their presence felt in the coming general election.

You can see why the political parties are nervous about the general election. The media playing field on which it will be fought has a new, unfamiliar terrain thanks to online competition. Local newspapers may have closed or slimmed down, but political bloggers have forced politicians to rethink their relationship with the press.

What was once a cosy, exclusive Fleet Street corps of lobby reporters must now include irreverent, self-made stars of the blogosphere such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale. And new technology, from the online video that exposed Alan Duncan’s belief that MPs were forced to live on “rations” to the Conservatives publishing shadow cabinet expenses in real time, has changed the public’s expectations.

Set-piece campaigns, for instance, are now more problematic than ever before. A £500,000 Conservative poster campaign featuring an apparently airbrushed David Cameron was intended to get the election year off to a flying start. Within a few days, dozens of photoshopped spoofs appeared on MyDavidCameron.com. But new media also presents politicians of all persuasions with a chance to talk more directly to the public than ever before. Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, is one of many who have become adept at using micro-blogging website Twitter to speak simultaneously to constituents and the media.

Mr Cameron himself has assiduously used websites such as Mumsnet to reach out directly – with varying levels of success – to specific groups of voters.

And blogging tools and idioms, too, have allowed nimble new pressure groups such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance, widely seen as a deniable attack-dog of the Tory Right, to emerge.

The fact remains, however, that the audience for political blogs is fairly limited. It may no longer be possible to dismiss them as a small band of bedroom obsessives poring over the traditional media’s droppings, but newspapers will still lead in setting the tone of the popular campaign.

Yet while many newspapers will still drip daily scorn on Gordon Brown rather than Mr Cameron, the social media will also play a key role. The internet, after all, can provide good copy. It is for their impact on the sociology of the political class and the Fourth Estate that this generation of political bloggers will be remembered.

Since the 2005 election, we have raced past the tipping point. Facebook has 23 million British users. About half of the eligible voters are social networkers, sharing and seeking recommendations among peers rather than trusting broadcast messages. The real contest is not the three-way blogs/newspapers/politicians fight, but how effectively each can cast its bait into the social networking sites, and who will have the greatest effect.

So what can we expect from this campaign? There will be widgets explaining tactical voting options to more people than ever before. As a result, the numbers voting against parties rather than for them will increase. Small parties without the resources to hit doorsteps may use these tools to reach that swelling protest vote.

The major parties will have “deniable outriders” to do poisonous negative campaigning on their behalf. Politicians will get personally savaged. There will be more tenuous attack-oriented arguments – ones that journalists wouldn’t have touched in the past.

The most interesting contribution social media may make is that it could offer the Tories an opportunity to project themselves as a responsible government-in-waiting. Tory strategists have already acknowledged that public pessimism may hurt them: if things really are that bad, the Conservatives know there’s a risk that the public could put aside their distaste for Gordon Brown and stick with the devil they know.

This will be a “downswing” election dominated by spending cuts rather than promised tax-handouts. Being positive will be difficult, and attack-bloggers won’t exactly help. So to sell the idea that responsible positive action is possible in a restricted economic climate, parties need a “big idea”.

The Tories’ “post-bureaucratic age” narrative relies heavily upon dynamic collaboration, a hallmark of the social web. It aims to apply open-source thinking to convene good judgment from a disparate community and to cut waste by reducing pen-pushers and consultants and by automating processes.

One of the brains the Tories have turned to is MySociety founder Tom Steinberg. His fingerprints appear to be all over shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s pledge of £1 million in Cabinet Office funding to the best idea for crowd-sourcing public intelligence.Several politicians would be tempted by the reflexive offer to let voters “have your say”, but this is a cannier step. Mr Hunt is looking to get the public to help interpret and re-present government data.

The Conservatives need the social web to help create a positive, reassuring buzz around them. Offering a narrative that breaks the economic stalemate may be Cameron’s brightest hope. Playing a part in that may be the real impact that social media has on the 2010 election.

Paul Evans blogs at blog.localdemocracy.org.uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/

Demand for rented homes is outstripping the supply of properties available to let, research claimed today.

Demand for rented homes is outstripping the supply of properties available to let following a rise in reluctant tenants, research claimed today.

The Association of Residential Letting Agents (Arla) said the number of homes available to let was falling, while demand for rented accommodation was rising as people struggled to find properties to buy or mortgages they qualified for.

Around 41pc of letting agents said there were more potential tenants than properties during the final quarter of 2009, up from 24pc during the three months to the end of September.

The situation is a marked turnaround from early last year, when the rental market was flooded with properties from so-called accidental landlords, as people who had been unable to sell their home while house prices were falling, were forced to rent it out instead.

But the number of accidental landlords has fallen in recent months as the property market has picked up, enabling them to sell their homes.

At the same time, many people who would like to buy a property are struggling to find somewhere suitable, due to the shortage of homes on the market, while others are unable to raise the deposits they need to meet the strict lending criteria of banks and building societies, forcing them to rent instead.

Around 54pc of letting agents said they thought consumers were being forced to rent a property rather than buy one.

The research also showed that the length of time for which a property is empty between tenants fell slightly during the fourth quarter to 3.9 weeks, down from four weeks during the previous three months.

Ian Potter, operations manager at Arla, said: “New tenants include those homeowners who were forced to sell their home during the last year either due to financial instability or a job move.

“And many people now in a position to buy are struggling to find the right property, as there is also a shortage of both properties for sale and realistic mortgages.”

But he warned that, while the private rented sector would be key to meeting the accommodation needs of future generations, it was likely to struggle without significant Government support.

http://www.workfromhomeinuk.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/

Britain’s biggest energy supplier is inviting business owners to apply to join a new “listening panel”. The lucky hand-picked few will have “unprecedented access” to British Gas and its executives, we are told. They are to be flown to offshore gas fields, winched up gas-fired power stations and dazzled by energy trading rooms.

If they survive all that, they can tell managing director Phil Bentley and the senior leadership team exactly what they really think of British Gas.

For the “one or two business owners” chosen to join the 20-strong customer panel (the rest will be domestic customers) this is no doubt an opportunity to ask the company some tough questions.

They could start with asking why it makes switching from its services so hard and why its championing of “plain English” contracts do not stop it from hiding rules in the small print that would challenge even the most eagle-eyed linguist.

The more cynical commentators would suggest this is just a PR stunt. And they have. Consumer Focus energy expert Audrey Gallacher says that “only time will tell’’ if British Gas will take notice of its customer panel. “Consumers are already suspicious that all this talk of ‘listening’ is nothing more than PR window dressing,’’ she said.

The announcement is timed with the rollout of the company’s new Smart meters. Households can chose to use these devices if they want but will not be forced to do so by law until 2020.

The Government is, however, expected to announce soon that it will require businesses to use smart meters more quickly than previously expected. The decision will affect approximately 2.2m electricity meters and 1.5m gas meters.

Adoption of new technology on such a large scale will inevitably generate problems: meters failing; vital gas and electricity supplies cut off because of misunderstandings.

For that reason alone, having some small businesses feeding back their concerns into British Gas will be invaluable. Volunteers should visit: www.britishgas.co.uk/listening

http://www.askhowtosave.com

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/richardtyler/

Richard Tyler is the Daily Telegraph’s Enterprise Editor. He writes about all aspects of business life and edits the Telegraph’s Your Business page, which appears in print every Tuesday and Sunday and is updated daily online.

United Utilities has warned that it will have to lower its dividend by 12.5pc and make more job cuts, after accepting the regulator’s decision to reduce customer bills over the next five years.

The FTSE 100 company said it has already cut 500 jobs and more will go as it undertakes a large cost-saving programme, primarily in its regulated business.

“It is inevitable that there will be more job cuts,” said Philip Green, chief executive of the water group. “But we are also bringing costs down in other areas, like customer service delivery, where costs have gone from £23 per customer to £19 per customer. We are also looking at pension costs.”

United has also signed new supplier contracts which it hopes will deliver significant savings and improve operational efficiency.

The company will pay a total dividend of 34.3p per share for the current financial year, dropping to 30p next year. It hopes to grow the payout by 2pc a year after that.

United has spent two months deciding whether to refer Ofwat’s tough pricing review to the Competition Commission. It was asked to reduce household bills by 0.4pc and accept a capital investment programme of £3.6bn rather than the £3.7bn it wanted between 2011 and 2015.

Shares in the company, which has 3.2m customers, rose 16½ to 525p and analysts expressed relief that the dividend cut was less than the 20pc-40pc many had feared.

United’s decision not to challenge the review came as Bristol Water, now majority-owned by French utility giant Suez Environnement, decided to challenge Ofwat’s pricing restrictions with the Commission. The regulator said it could raise bills by 7pc – a generous settlement compared with other companies – but Bristol Water wanted a 29pc increase, lifting average bills from £157 to £202 over the next five years.

Jeremy Williams, a spokesman for the company, said Bristol Water had “absolutely no choice” but to launch an appeal. “We have never done this before but it’s the only way we will be able to finance our investment programme,” he said.

“We don’t think Ofwat has taken into account the special circumstances of population growth and need for investment in the Bristol area. We are putting our faith in the Commission to do the right thing.”

The company serves 450,000 customers in the Bristol region, where the population is forecast to grow by 40pc in the next two decades. Severn Trent and South West Water owner Pennon announced this week they will not challenge Ofwat.

http://www.askhowtosave.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/

There are over eight million people who are “economically inactive”, a record number according to the Office for National Statistics.

These include students, retired, parents staying at home to look after children, long-term sick and those who have simply given up looking for a job – “discouraged” in the euphemistic language of the statisticians.

The 8.05 million economically inactive are on top of the 2.46 million unemployed. Together they represent 21.2 per cent of the adult population.

The increase in economically inactive people, especially the growing numbers of school leavers that decided to go to college rather than spend months looking for a job, are the main reason why the growth in unemployment has been held in check, according to experts.

Corin Taylor, policy director at the Institute of Directors, said: “The number of people working part time, and the number of economically inactive mask the true impact of unemployment.”

The number of people unemployed fell by 7,000 in the three months to November to stand at 2.47 million. Many economists are now hopeful that this recession will see far fewer unemployed than during those of the early 1990s and 1980s – on both occasions the total jobless figure broke through the 3 million barrier.

George Buckley, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank, said workers were more willing to accept low pay and shorter hours in return for keeping their jobs, in contrast to previous recessions when companies were not so flexible.

“These figures are encouraging,” he said. “In previous recessions it took years for unemployment to stop rising, but that hasn’t happened this time.”

But many warned that families would feel the impact of lower incomes for many years to come, with a record 1.03 million working part-time because they were unable to secure a full-time job.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “The fact that tens of thousands more young people are taking up the Government’s guarantee of a place in education or training means that they are getting the valuable skills they need to get into work.”

http://www.workfromhomeinuk.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/

The gap between public and private sector wages has hit a record level, according to official figures.

Workers in the public sector are now being paid more than £2,000 extra a year compared with employees in the private sector, after public sector pay continued to race ahead of inflation.

The average public sector worker was paid £23,660 a year, compared with private sector workers who were paid £21,528 a year, in the three months to the end of November.

This is the first time that the gap, which has slowly widened under the Labour Government, has hit more than £2,000 and came as figures showed that the discrepancy between pay increases in the public and private sector had never been so wide.

The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) prompted experts to warn that so far the private sector had borne the brunt of the recession and that the Government needed to take action sooner rather than later to tackle the growing public sector wage bill.

“Public sector pay has exploded out of control,” said David Frost, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

The figures were published as part of the ONS monthly update on unemployment and wages, with many pleasantly surprised that the overall unemployment figure had dropped a by 7,000 to 2.46 million for the three months to November. Some are hopeful that unemployment, which many feared could climb well above 3 million, could peak at little more than 2.5 million.

However, the data on wages were far less encouraging, with average pay increases across all workers increasing by just 1.1 per cent, the lowest level since records began nine years ago.

Nearly all of the increase came from the public sector, with nurses, teachers, civil servants and other public workers enjoying an average annual pay rise of 3.8 per cent in the three months to the end of November. Meanwhile private sector employees saw their salaries rise by just 0.2 per cent, as thousands of firms froze their workers’ pay as part of a desperate bid to cut costs in the recession.

This gap of 3.6 percentage points is the widest ever recorded by the ONS.

John Philpott, the chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: “I can understand the unease many private sector workers feel when they see their contemporaries in the public sector not only getting better conditions and pensions, but also better pay.

“But everyone knows the public sector gravy train is going to be derailed.”

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond said: “We have the largest deficit in the G20 and no credible strategy to get a grip on it, which is threatening higher mortgage rates and higher borrowing costs.”

Experts gave warning that the dire state of the public finances meant that public sector pay increases had to stop.

Corin Taylor, policy director at the Institute of Directors, said: “The private sector has responded very flexibly to the recession by cutting pay and freezing wages. And that has helped people stay in a job.

“The public sector has got to follow suit. The Government has no choice. It is borrowing £178 billion this year and it is coping with the largest peacetime deficit. Something has to give. There will have to be a public sector pay freeze or public sector pay cuts. It will be painful but it is necessary.”

The public sector has continued to take on new workers in recent months, the statistics showed, with 6.09 million people employed by the taxpayer compared with 5.8 million a year ago.

Both the NHS and Jobcentre Plus have been hiring more people, even though Alistair Darling has admitted cuts will have to be made to the public payroll.

Over the last year, despite, last month’s recovery, 723,000 jobs have been shed from the private sector.

Mr Frost said: “This just isn’t sustainable. My members are telling me that they are losing workers to the public sector, because not only can they see the better holidays and pensions, but also now the better pay.

“The wealth-creating private sector is losing out to the public sector. And we will have to pay for this – through higher taxes. We’ve got to get a grip.”

For many years public sector workers were paid less than those in the private sector, with workers willing to accept lower pay in return for greater job security and better pensions. However in the last decade public sector pay has increased at a far greater rate, with GP partners now earning £107,000 a year and many head teachers in secondary schools paid more than £100,000.

Mr Philpott added that many of the most menial jobs in the public sector have been outsourced as part of Gordon Brown’s private finance initiatives, “leaving many in the public sector as well paid managers.”

http://www.workfromhomeinuk.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/

City’s financial sector to grow by 100,000 new jobs within 10 years, predicts hedge fund.

London’s role as a financial centre is set to be boosted by the economic growth of emerging market countries, according to a top City hedge fund.

“The idea that London is going to full of tumbleweed in 10 years is not credible,” Savvas Savouri, chief economist at Tosca, told the Financial Times – contradicting many bankers’ gloomy predictions about the demise of the City due to the Government’s perceived hostility to the financial sector.

Instead, Mr Savouri predicts that London will attract at least 100,000 new financial jobs in the next 10 years, as the growth of the Bric economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – works in the City’s advantage.

“There are too many aspirational economies that don’t have infrastructures of their own. We have an affinity with India, with the Gulf, even with China – via Hong Kong. These markets will want a western hub,” he said.

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, last week added his voice to the throng warning of a City exodus due to the introduction of a 50pc tax on top earners’ and one-off levy bank bonuses. They mayor suggested that banks could move 9,000 staff out of London in response. Some hedge funds – such as BlueCrest Capital and Brevan Howard – have already relocated staff to Switzerland.

However, Tosca believes that concerns over taxes and regulation are unwarranted. “Taxes are rising and regulation is being tightened elsewhere too.” Mr Savouri told the FT.

His forecasts are modelled in part on the growth of the Japanese banking sector in London over the last 20 years. A similar per capita representation of Bric economies in the capital would create 180,000 new jobs, he said.

http://www.workfromhomeinuk.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/