Why you should now consider selling your business to an employee ownership trust

The last time there was a hung parliament in the UK Norman Lamb MP (the then minister for Employment Relations Consumer And Postal Affairs) said that growing the UK economy was the coalition’s most pressing priority. The coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats recognised that the financial crisis had exposed the UK’s economy as being too narrowly focused on certain sectors and regions with the majority of UK companies structured around one type of business model.

To ensure that the long term growth of the UK economy was strong and more evenly balanced one of the coalition’s aims was for there to be a ‘decade of wider employee ownership’. The feeling at the time was that this would create long term sustainable...