Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey in UK Top 10 for Micro Business
At the Tory party conference yesterday, Boris's "nation of SMEs" praised Britain as a nation of small businesses. This inspired The FT data blog to recycle some ONS data and create a snapshot of where the micro business community is thriving in the UK.*
The FT show that London has more micro-businesses as a proportion of the area's total number of businesses than any other region. They put Haringey towards the top of the UK league with micro businesses representing 82.9% of all businesses.
This might show that Haringey has a thriving entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps we're in a borough that is a tremendous place for small companies to do business and that we are ideally placed to help the UK grow out of the doldrums. On the other hand, it might equally show that the 'ME' part of the 'SME' sector is sickly locally and that micro-businseses offer one of the only employment options for those with little choice.
*Micro businesses, companies that employ between 0-4 people, currently represent over three quarters of SMEs.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by abstractjuz on
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Interesting points Hugh - thanks for posting this.
It makes a change from hearing politicians talking about 'small to medium' as though their perception of 'small' was low millions or a small business was a small airline or one with not quite as many trains as Great Western.
Not sure what it says about the state of the neighbourhood - but we do still have High Streets round here and I'm guessing a lot of our favourite shops would be less <4 employees?
There's also the fact that a lot of 'micro' businesses might not 'employ' people - but that doesn't mean they don't have people working for them as freelancers, contractors, suppliers, etc.
My 0.02
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Here's one side of a set of interactions I had with one person about this post on Twitter yesterday. (There were also some private Twitter messages explaining more, but for obvious reasons I am not republishing those):
- Re your tweet @harringayonline. I'd put it down mostly to desperation. I seem to be having a cross day.
- @harringayonline Lost my job recently & I'm now looking at self employment, partly as reaction to lack of opportunity
- @harringayonline Sorry. The whole thing really has got to me today. I'm very cross and frustrated. Not like me at all
- @harringayonline Had I got a job straight away, I would probably have taken it optimistically, as it is I'm just thinking bollocks to it
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Sorry - I'm not sure what your point is?
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I'm not trying to make a point here, simply republishing one person's reaction.
The inference I took from that reaction was that this person feel obliged to take the micro business route due to lack of choice.
(PS: Apologies for the higher than normal amount of typos in the original post - particularly busy day yesterday.)
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I'd buy into that opinion if I could see a correlation between e.g. the recent economic down turn and a recent increase in the formation of micro businesses.
I don't have an FT subscription - does it show a time frame for the collection of these numbers?
Difficult to get a meaningful interpretation of the data without that.
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Here's the ONS dataset that the FT used as the basis for their work.
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Hugh, I'm glad to see you're having a particularly bus day again today! Is that with LTR or a small private business you've been keeping quiet about?
I wonder how far Haringey's high 'micro-business' ranking is due to the proliferation of, say, Harringay's Turkish/Kurdish restaurants giving work to family members and taking raw materials (meat/veg/fruit/bread/water/beer) from (and having their hair cut by) other family members next door?
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Youda thunk I could have made that one single sentence error free, wuntcha!
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Catching! Presumably my LTR meant TFL - two-thirds right and I haven't been on a bus for weeks.
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Permalink Reply by Matt on
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I think you become a small business when you have ten employees. However that does not make sense if the are two of you and you turn over £5m!
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Permalink Reply by David Barry on
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It would not surprise me if Haringey was a Borough of two halves -east and west - for micro businesses as well. My impression would be that there are quite a lot of working from home free lancers in the west of the borough...with lots of the extended family businesses you describe to the east. I suppose some of the cafes in Crouch end are micro businesses...
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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The question you pose, David, is both fascinating and important. Though I'd prefer not simply to take the starting point of the "east" or the "west" of Haringey. Plainly this is significant for many issues. But it also seems to blinker some thinking.
Not least is has severely limited discussion about job creation after the riot. So we had the absurdity of reports which assumed that it was practical for the small businesses in Tottenham - narrowly defined - to take on many extra staff. Sometimes it seemed as if people ignore the fact that that we are part of one of the largest cities in Europe. A city which is still creating jobs and attracting workers from across the world.
Of course, Haringey's east-west differences are linked to wider issues of transience; poverty; health; class; race; and ethnicity here and in other in large cities. And for me as a Tottenham resident and elected councillor - the particular features of London and its poorest areas.
I'd like to ask HoL members for help. I'd appreciate ideas and pointers for study; and possibly conversations with people who have particular experience and expertise in this field. People are welcome to contact me directly by email: alan.stanton@virgin.net
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