24-25_David Robertson.qxp_Grid 05/05/2025 12:57 Page 1
OVER THE
COUNTER
BY DAVID ROBERTSON OF JP POZZI, ELGIN AND BUCKIE.
A Pebble In My Shoe
It’s been a funny month. Funny as in challenging not funny as in ha ha. April 1 was no fool’s day this year for many small businesses as they were hit with a raft of challenges, not least the increases in Minimum Wage, NIC and business rates. Helping me to digest this latest round of increases have been two phrases, ‘adversity is a privilege’ and ‘It’s not the boulder in your path, but the pebble in your shoe…” with a ticket to see Bryan Adams play his appropriately entitled Bare Bones show adding some nostalgic calm and resolve as a new look card display beds into one of our stores. NIC has risen by 1.2% to 15% and the double whammy is that the limit from which it is charged has dropped to £5k, bringing so many more people into its grasp. The NIC cost for our team has doubled to around £3k a month, which causes a worry knowing we have to find that extra money. Many of us were already struggling to cope with the annual jump in minimum wage but with the NI added to it many businesses are figuring out how to accommodate these cost increases. All businesses I know want to try and reward staff to keep and incentivise them, but over the last five years we have seen minimum wage increase from £8.72 to £12.21, which is a 40% increase in five years. I really wonder where politicians think that we can find this extra money from. Retail and hospitality have little room for manoeuvre. There has been talk about business rates being reformed 24 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above: If you have just one pebble in your shoe, you know about it! Below: David Robertson’s hard work (including on the fitness front) has seen him shed three stones in the last seven months… bit more than a pebble! Bottom left: Rock legend Bryan Adams on stage at the intimate Inverness Bare Bones concert. Bottom right: A JP Pozzi VE Day window.
since Adam was a boy, but this never seems to happen either and Scotland has been in a worse situation than England as we didn’t ever receive the reductions that have now ended down south. So just how do we cope with this? What are the majority of businesses doing to manage these increases? I was interested to read the findings of a survey of over 250 separate companies across many sectors that was carried out recently by The Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) which is based at Stirling University. ■ 92% expected their costs to increase ■ 47% had reduced hiring or planned to trim their workforce ■ 27% planned to reduce staff benefits ■ 49% had increased prices to cover it ■ 12% looked to find savings through automation or tech. And this is all against a back drop of uncertainty around trade, tariffs and goodness knows what else. Whether a new or old business every day brings a fresh set of problems, meaning fresh solutions need to be sought and put in place.