An Open Invitation to Citizens Advice
In a finding that will surprise precisely nobody Citizens Advice, which until April 2014 was Consumer Futures, and before that was Consumer Focus and before that Energywatch have taken time out of their busy rebranding schedule to update their understanding of the pressures that small businesses face.
In a survey of 2,000 companies, the organisation that styles itself as “the charity for your community” (no we don’t understand it either) has revealed that nearly half of all respondents (46%) were concerned about the cost of electricity for their business.
Gillian Guy, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice, said:
“Regulators, firms and business groups need to pay far greater attention to the ways in which these markets meet the needs of small business.”
Ms Guy went on to malign the lack of “market power” available to small businesses claiming that Citizens Advice would be looking to redouble their efforts to help small companies get a better deal from their energy suppliers.
Ms Guy added:
“Small businesses can feel powerless when it comes to the cost of their electricity.”
Whilst we agree that the cost of energy is a significant overhead and therefore concern for businesses of all shapes and sizes we do not share Ms Guy’s view as to the helplessness of the situation.
We extend an open invitation to Ms Guy to visit Business Juice to understand just what it is that we are doing to drive “market power” into the arms of small businesses and to bring the quality of service and negotiating strength long available to larger organisations to all businesses.
We do hope that Ms Guy can take up our offer so as to help her guide businesses in a suitably constructive way to tackle their energy issues.