Almost half of British SMEs admit to not allocating enough cash reserves to pay their energy bills, new national research has revealed.
The survey, carried out by Vickers Energy Group with 100 SME owners, asked directors about provisions for their bills, whether cutting energy consumption was top of mind and what, if any, measure they had in place to do this.
It also found that nearly three quarters of businesses are familiar with ‘bill shock’ during the energy heavy autumn/winter months. Despite this half are put off examining their energy consumption.
Firms also reported that they spend too much of their budgets on fuel and over half say it is higher than they would like and, if they knew how to reduce it, over 86% would put a plan into place to cut costs.
Despite environmental concerns being on the news agenda for decades, four out of ten businesses have never been offered any help or advice on how to reduce their bills and nearly a fifth don’t know what ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ is and have no time to act on reducing their carbon emissions.
David Hilton, MD of Vickers Energy Group, said: “UK industry really isn’t geared up for the forthcoming autumn/winter months with 40% saying that they don’t make any preparations to make sure that funds are available to pay their bills. It’s frightening that UK plc seems to be so ill prepared, and that businesses feel there is little or no help out there to bring their bills. We are calling for more support for UK businesses to help them address an obvious need, and one that not only affects them but the whole of the UK. Reducing energy consumption will help businesses become more efficient and successful on the domestic and international stage.”
Sara Rittershausen from Burnham Nurseries said: “Prioritising energy consumption within our business was difficult with other priorities taking over. As an orchid nursery, the issues we face in our greenhouses are on a huge scale and it was a daunting prospect trying to tackle the rising energy bills.
“We finally decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and address our rising costs which were getting too large for the business to sustain. Installing an energy management system has been a huge help and has made addressing the issues simple. It is extremely low maintenance and has cut our gas consumption by 27%, clearly demonstrating that there are simple solutions to tackle the rising costs of energy bills.”
