Free VAT Open Day for Businesses

Free VAT advice open day for businesses

Shropshire Council and HM Revenue & Customs will be holding a free advisory day in Shrewsbury on 11 March to help explain to newly-registered businesses the importance of filing their VAT returns online.

Under government proposals it will become compulsory from April 2010 for VAT registered business to complete VAT returns online and pay any VAT due electronically.

Shropshire businesses affected by this change are being invited to the exhibition and seminar programme at the Prostar Stadium on Thursday 11 March to meet experts from government department agencies, and to find out more about help and support to start, survive or grow in business today.

Jill Poole, from HM Revenue and Customs Business Liaison Team, said: “I am pleased to be able to invite businesses to this event which offers a wide range of advice for small and medium sized businesses. In addition, we will be offering assistance to VAT registered businesses for the VAT Online service.”

Councillor David Roberts, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for local environment and economy said: “I’m pleased that we are able to support this important event which I would urge businesses to attend. One of the main aims for the Shropshire Business Board is to work with partners and other organisations to simplify the information available to businesses and to make it easier for them to access existing support services. This event will help to meet this aim.”

For more information about the event, call 01682 755214 or 01743 252531

MP Silent on Local Tory Turmoil

The very public spat between ousted former Tory Borough Council leader Peter Nutting and current Tory Shropshire Council leader Keith Barrow throws up several significant questions. Cllr Nutting has been ruthlessly stripped of his Deputy Leadership and sacked from all his other main committee posts on the unitary new authority.  Yet only recently our Tory MP praised Cllr Nutting in the fullest possible terms.

In a Parliamentary debate on Local Government in March 2007 MP Daniel Kawczynski said of the Borough Council “It has an excellent chief executive and a formidable council leader, Peter Nutting.” Yet less than 3 years later Cllr Nutting has been ejected from power by his own Party, and Robin Hooper seems long gone.

As a Councillor on all of the Borough, County and Unitary Councils I always respected Peter Nutting as a hard working local representative. But I had deep differences with him over policy, particularly the spending spree the Tories indulged in with the sale proceeds of the Borough council houses. A recurring problem I found was getting information to scrutinise these spending decisions. The regular exclusion of the public under the exempt item rules, such as happened with the secret sale of the Barker Street car park, is just one example.

Sadly this is still going on. I have found great difficulty in getting details out of the Tory led Shropshire Council, to try and get to the bottom of of the huge Quantum Leap spending total. Yet both Peter Nutting and Keith Barrow are now publicly claiming they want more open and democratic local government. They can start by holding a full investigation into the huge sums spent on the Darwin celebrations, and why local residents  seem to have got so little in return.

And what of our Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, what has he got to say about this local Tory turmoil? When it comes to his own Party, he seems to go very, very, quiet.