New Enterprise Allowance scheme - My story

TrueBlue1965

Andy, the study was over the first 6 months of trading with NEA support and a further 6 months after finishing with NEA support. Im sure that some of those businesses will have gone under after the first 12 months of trading. Many others will be doing very well. Some would have also done as well without any NEA support.. The fact that those in that study on NEA where on the high end of still trading after 12 months. Does suggest that NEA offers a better chance than going it alone. It was clearly bad for you, mate. Its to your credit that your making your business work. But, for many its clear that NEA offers a better chance of success!

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Its a good job you dont need to understand reports and statistics to run your business, Andy, lol. Let me explain the figures for you. 2,960 people started NEA between April - December 2011. They where followed over 13/26/52 weeks to see how many of those people made claims for benefits. The study finished in December 2012. That was only 17 months ago. The report was published in July 2013

Wrong they ended in December 2011 and its irrelevant when it was printed, so as I have said before ,out of date.

Andy, I suggest that you edit your post as your making yourself look silly now.

Andy2013

No your alright I wont be taking advice of you .

So this morning I put I a Freedom of information request to DWP and also HMRC so we can get an idea of the true figures, the request was easily made but it may take some time to receive this info ( around 20 working days) but I think its fair to say there is nothing on the internet to tell us what we want to know.

A bit geeky and something I thought I would never do but after the last few days I have become more intrigued as to the true success of this scheme.

I requested both figures for 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 just in case these are available and I asked to be given details of the number of those claimants who continued with self employment beyond the NEA scheme ending and also beyond 12 months using details of those who were registered as self employed during NEA ( which should be everyone if they have complied ) and then those who either cancelled this with HMRC or began a new claim with JSA / began employment or equivalent.

This should tell us how many on the scheme actually still trade.

We will see what this brings back.

tomterm8

It will be interesting to find out the results of your freedom of information requests, but I doubt it will be fruitful. I don't think they record this info.

Andy2013

Yes I agree it would mean cross referencing different stats but its worth a go, its a service available to us all so we might as well try.

dktreesea

Andy, in theory they do record the info you are asking for. I am just not sure if they then do anything with it. HMRC would have a record of a taxpayer registering as self employed and, at some later point, deregistering if that taxpayer wanted to go back on JSA. I doubt if DWP would open the pocketbook if he hadn't deregistered his business.

I am just not sure about the time periods. The latest data for the self employed on HMRC's website is for the 2011/12 year. Maybe the Office of National Statistics would have more recent data? I'm not sure when their latest labour force survey is published, though they are meant to be including better figures about self employment than they have in the past.

As for the DWP, historically they haven't collected anything on the self employed because they haven't been responsible for administering their benefits. Their statistics are pretty dreadful anyway, the worst of the three, imho. They seem to work from a standpoint of how much they can conceal about what's going on in their department rather than how better to inform both politicians and the public at large.

dktreesea

In HMRC's latest figures for the self employed, for 2011/12, it seems to me many of these businesses are zombie businesses, possibly whose only purpose is to facilitate the flow of benefits to the individuals.

For instance (from the report)
"The number of individuals with at least one self employment income source is 5.49 million, of which 3.55 million (Table 3.6) are taxpayers."

Table 3.10 shows this is stark relief. (page 46 of the report. Sorry I can't cut and paste it; it didn't copy across properly)
777,000 self employed people declared a loss in their businesses. Another 3.2 million had incomes from self employment less that £15k a year (so would qualify at least for WTC under current rules, in the absence of other income.)

Of course, the table is a bit misleading in terms of liability for taxation, because it doesn't show us the extent of the losses, just recording them all as nil income, so we don't know how much of the employment income could then be offset, and how much the loss would reduce the overall income.

Table 3.11 does shed some light on this. of the 5.49 million self employed, only 3.55 million had net incomes over what was then presumably the personal allowance threshold of £7,475. And of that 3.55 million people, 1.32 million earn less than £10k a year.

So 3.2 million self employed people, including the 1.94 million who don't even have enough income to be required to file a tax return, who don't even make enough profit to equal the full time NMW.

And this is all for two years ago! Since then, those becoming self employed, including those currently on the NEA, have soared.

dktreesea

This is the report:
www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/personal-incomes/tables3-1_3-11.pdf

I searched on "hmrc personal statistics 2011 2012"

Andy2013

I will have a read of this tonight it sounds interesting, I did think we might be jumping into a big black hole .

I would have thought they have figures for 2012/13 if not 13/14 because the government keep telling us how well things are going and they are not using figures from 2 or 3 years ago, they seem to think they are recent figures so maybe they need asking and the info is just not readily available.

The true figures for a lot of stats I would imagine may well be kept out of the public domain until after next years election ,unless they are very strong and then they may be used to boost the party.

When I get news I will happily post the results , or negative answer which ever comes my way.

Place2print

Hi all i've been hanging around this forum since April (when i was referred to the NEA Scheme) and you guys have given me pretty much all the info i would of ever needed so thanks for that

i intend on starting up my own Transfer printing business.
Tomorrow is my 1st meeting with my mentor so i thought i would sign up to share my experience from this point on and give others info.

Ive done the basics such as completing the Business plan and financials just hope im not told to re do the whole thing lol.. I know NEA is an old scheme and there where problems in 2011/2012 have the issues been ironed out or is it just another Government Ponzi scheme we shall see.

Rachel199

Hi
I've been following this thread for a while and finally got on the NEA scheme in April. There two elements of my business, one of which I could start right away and the other which I need the loan for.
I've progressed well with my business plan without the help of a non existent mentor but I'm stuck on my cash flow - thought this would be the best place to ask.
So do I include my personal expenses on the cash flow (its asking for vehicle expenses, rent, travel etc none of which apply to my business as its working from home)
And should I do 2 separate forecasts for the 2 separate elements of the business?
Only bits I'm stuck on so would really appreciate the help. Thanks!!