Member

Turning to business property relief, family-owned businesses are feeling just the same squeeze. In places like North Shropshire, there is a high percentage of family-owned businesses. Last week I spoke to the managing director of Ridgway Rentals, a medium-sized family-run plant hire company, whose head office is based in the market town of Oswestry in my constituency. As a plant hire company operating nationwide, its assets include excavators, diggers, bulldozers and other large bits of machinery, which means that they have a very high asset worth. The managing director told me that the changes to BPR mean there is “no point in growing as a business” and believes there must be countless other businesses that have either closed or been sold because of the Government’s recent multifaceted attack on business in this country. While he did say that the recent increase in the threshold is an improvement, the managing director said that it only “slightly loosens the noose that sits around businesses’ necks”.