Advantis Home Maintenance Ltd.

Congestion Charging Manchester - Check Please!

Well, Reality Check please!

As a small home maintenance business trying to conduct business in an age of more and more stealth taxes I am not a big supporter of grandiose plans to drive me further out of the market place. The current multi million pound propaganda drive to convince us on how useful Congestion Charging will be to Manchester is a case in point. I personally feel something has to be done to ease congestion, well pollution actually, I’m not sure I agree that charging small businesses to enter the very city the public wish us to keep running is the way forward.

Is this unclear? Let me clarify. I hear daily from my own customer base that it is difficult to find a reliable and licensed plumber, gas fitter or electrician in the City Centre. I know that the rates to undertake work in the City Centre are already steaper than outside the city. I know that despite everyone’s fear of killing the planet that no one wants to move into a cave and when a leak starts flooding you and your neighbour or you have a gas leak or you just want a new kitchen or bathroom appliance added; most folks don’t really care about the environment and the argument becomes cost.

So to the case of cost:

1. If I keep my my business in Manchester City Centre and drive in to work every day I’m going to have to charge my city and my out of city clients an extra fee.
2. If I keep my business in Manchester City Centre and also move into the City Centre I’ll have to charge my city clients extra.
3. If I move my business out of the city centre and don’t live in the city centre I’ll have to charge my clients extra.

As my client base is in and around the Greater Manchester area and I never really know where my next call will come from I’ll be in and out several times a day. My staff will be in and out several times a day. My clients will be paying for not only the Congestion Charge but an administration fee for making the call and getting the pass as the current government cannot seem to at least have the billing done automatically, as they do in Canada.

So when it comes down to saving the environment I would like to see a simple formula showing how all of this extra money from everybody is saving us. To quote the recent flyer from the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority, “The £5 charge in 2007 prices will be no more than £6, in 2013 if charging is introduced then as planned.” Which means is that the congestion charge could go up and probably will go up but shouldn’t go up. Of course we all know that government charges rarely stay the same and rarely go down. I will have no choice except to pass the charges on to my client because it will ultimately be their problem. If I move my company away from the city centre it will cost. If I move outside the city it will cost. What to do?

Perhaps then the answer is that all city centre clients need to move out of the city so we don’t have to service them. That would eliminate all requirement for anybody to be in the city. We could move everthing outside of the ring road and carry on business with just the usual increasing cost of petrol, increasing coproration tax, increasing minimum wage, increasing cost to memberships such as NIC EIC and CORGI, increasing cost of training and memberships along with all of the other costs I am enevitably stuck with because we are not a cowboy operation.

It is not evil to enter the city centre as the government is trying to make out. Those who provide essential services such as delivery people, couriers, plumbers, gas fitters, electricians, cleaners, repair persons and other miscellaneous tradespeople are not in the city for no reason. We’ve been called by the public to provide a service.

Perhaps everybody would like to see how easy it is to run a city centre business or home without us for a week or two. Enough is enough! Stop bullying us into more and more increases in the cost of doing business. We have to pass it on and the loser in all of this is the same public that you say your trying protecting.

Go live in a cave or live in a heated and lit house. There is a cost for comfortable living, If you don’t accept that cost then go back to the middle ages.