The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is a UK business organisation representing small and medium-sized businesses. It was formed in 1974 as the National Federation of Self Employed (NFSE).[1] The current name for the organisation was adopted in 1991. It is registered with Companies House as The National Federation of Self Employed & Small Businesses Limited (company number 1263540).[2]
FSB is a member-led, not-for-profit and non-party political organisation.[3] FSB is a lobbying organisation representing small firms and the self-employed to UK, national, local and devolved government.[4] FSB offers its members a range of benefits, such as a 24-hour legal advice line and free business banking.[5]
Structure
The current National Chairman of FSB is Mike Cherry OBE who was elected on 19 March 2016 [6]
In 2017 FSB had 184 branches around the UK and these were grouped into 33 regions.[7] Each branch and region has its own committee. In addition, there is a national committee which includes representatives from each regional committee.[8]
In January 2018, FSB's Board of Directors altered the organisation's volunteer structure by switching from elected Branches & Regions to an unelected, ad-hoc approach to local lobbying & representation.
This necessitated changes to FSB's National Council which now comprises 12 appointed representatives, selected from the 9 English regions and the 3 devolved countries.
Lobbying
FSB's past political lobbying activities have led in its own opinion to a number of benefits for small businesses,[9] such as:
Repeatedly overcoming attempts to impose unreasonable National Insurance Contributions
The introduction of enhanced capital allowances and flexible working hours
The reduction or removal of Corporation Tax for small limited companies
VAT reform in the form of a flat rate scheme for small businesses
An end to automatic fines for incorrect filing of VAT returns
Membership
FSB is a member-led federation. Membership criteria are as follows:[10]
Self-Employed or the owner, partner, or director of a business (or businesses) Based in the United Kingdom
The membership was 185,000 in 2006 and >160,000 in 2016.[12][13] The membership is 200,000+ if Joint, Associate, Retired, Connect and Business Creation (pre-start-up) affiliates are included.[14][15]
Small Business Index
The FSB Small Business Index measures confidence among small firms.[16] The FSB SBI has been quoted by the Bank of England,[17] the BBC,[18] Economia,[19] and EADT.[20]
Current logo
The current logo for the organisation was adopted in November 2015. The costs of this re-branding was £0.3M[21] and took well over a year to complete including a complete re-branding of the FSB Website.
