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22 March 2007

Kirkpatrick and Hopes launch new business support initiative to help pay for Gordon Brown’s plan to spend an extra £457 million* in Berkshire by launching a series of Business Development Workshops to help the region’s businesses grow so that they can help pay for the extra £457 million the Chancellor wants to spend in the Thames Valley.  

Leading Berkshire based accountants, Kirkpatrick and Hopes, are today launching a series of Business Development Workshops to help the region’s businesses grow so that they can help pay for the extra £457 million the Chancellor wants to spend in the Thames Valley.

Launching the initiative immediately after Gordon Brown’s Budget, Kirkpatrick and Hopes’ managing director, Andrew Gray, said that:
“At first sight this appears to be a “Plea for Help” Budget in which the Chancellor is relying on businesses here in the Thames Valley to help him out of a potentially very big problem.

Sadly Budgets are now more difficult than ever to assess - partly because of the amount of ‘spin’ used, and partly because of the complexity of the announcements. So, as always, the devil will be in the detail. But two things are already very clear.
Firstly, that it’s the cuts in tax rates and the £457 million increase in spending in the Thames Valley that will make the headlines.

And secondly that it’s the impact of the Chancellor’s announcements on the region’s job and wealth creating businesses that will determine whether the tax cuts and extra spending can actually be paid for.

Gordon Brown believes the giveaways can be paid for without further tax increases – because he believes that economic growth will be so strong that soon we will all be automatically paying more tax as we all earn and spend more. But the plain truth is that growth doesn’t happen by accident… we have to take action to make it happen.

And our new Business Development Workshops are one of the ways that Kirkpatrick and Hopes intend to help the region’s businesses put the Thames Valley at the top of the UK’s growth tables.

Using leading-edge thinking from acknowledged experts, the Business Development Workshops will help local businesses discover new ways to create more jobs, profits and wealth. And we are very excited to be able to help in this way.”

To discover exactly what the Business Development Workshops can do for you, please call Kirkpatrick and Hopes on 0118 923 5800 or email Bernadette Brownlie.

* Based on mid 2004 population estimates for the UK multiplied by (£34bn/60,000,000 = £567) population