A study by Hitachi Capital suggests that making premises compliant with the Covid-19 safety rules is set to cost smaller firms up to £23 billion across the remainder of 2021.

This expenditure will be on costs such as systems for filtering the air, cleaning by professional companies, products to allow customers to sanitise their hands, new signs to indicate what the rules are and regular risk assessments for premises and offices. Hitachi is estimating that each individual firm will have to spend an average of £4,850.

The financial services company spoke to 1,500 small firms from all over the country for this study, and it found that they expect average costs of £5,443 to make fixed business premises safe. For firms that are able to operate outdoors, the Covid-19 safety costs are expected to be £5,446 on average. A small business accountant in Goole and or wherever they are based may be able to help them reduce costs in other areas to finance this.

Those companies that have their employees working remotely are expecting average costs of £3,660 to be Covid-19 compliant, with these lower costs due to the fact that 68% do not intend to spend money on measures to control the virus.

The CEO of the OnFyre events firm, Darren Stanley, stated to Iwoca that his company had been forced to hire additional members of staff for one of its events held recently, just to ensure compliance, which had cost the firm £250.