Blog>News>SME4Labour Annual Lunch
Last updated: 21 May 2024
SME4Labour Annual Lunch
Jambu Palaniappan’s speech at the SME4Labour Annual Lunch on 21st May 2024.
Good afternoon - it's a pleasure to be with you today, supporting this important event.
It’s heartening to see politicians engage with businesses directly, and especially the SMEs who are the lifeblood of our economy.
Now, the problem with gold sponsors at political lunches is they sometimes want to sell their wares and end up saying something that means little to you, and even less to your constituents in their daily lives.
In the case of Checkatrade - which should be a relief to you all - you don’t have that problem. We want the same thing.
To create jobs, spread new trade skills, spur SME growth across all parts of the UK...
To help create safe and happy homes and improve lives, livelihoods and build communities...
We want a thriving business environment and a fair, competitive tech ecosystem that is the envy of the world.
The list goes on.
Our goals are aligned, and that is why we wanted to show our support here.
Checkatrade is a 25-year-old British success story. It all started in 1998 when a tornado struck a tiny seaside town in West Sussex.
Rogue tradespeople flooded in, botching jobs and ripping off the locals. So, we started a directory of local tradespeople whom we’d personally spoken to and checked.
We’ve never lost that simple dream to help our local community. From those humble beginnings, Checkatrade has become the UK’s leading destination for finding a tradesperson.
Today, we’re trusted by millions of homeowners because no-one checks trades like Checkatrade.
We’re so confident in the quality of our members that we guarantee their work up to £1,000 – so in the rare event that something goes wrong, we can help make it right.
Now in 2024, we have around 50,000 tradespeople that rely on us to grow and run their small and medium-sized businesses. From builders to window cleaners, landscapers to carpenters, we’re trusted by our members to help them earn a living.
That works well. Customers are doing around 3 million jobs a year through our platform. We’ve delivered over £7 billion of work to UK SMEs in the last year alone.
But we can be more, and that is why I joined. I became CEO of Checkatrade just over 6 months ago, after years of building and backing businesses that were solving real-world challenges.
I believe in the power of technology to change lives for the better. My vision is for Checkatrade to become a world-class platform that makes finding and securing a reliable tradesperson, and paying and reviewing them, as easy as making other daily purchases online.
British homes should be safe, happy and functional, so using technology to unlock how we care for them - from fixing things to home improvement to much-needed decarbonisation and better energy efficiency - will enable more people to improve their lives.
At the same time, we want to help provide more trades with more work and the ability to run their businesses more efficiently, boosting deprived local economies across the country and encouraging more people into a growing and vibrant sector.
To help make that vision a reality, even during these difficult economic times we’re investing heavily in new talent and have built an R&D centre in the heart of this great city.
But I want my team spending time outside our Portsmouth and London bases in the South, and pounding the streets around the UK, getting out to your constituencies, helping recruit and foster SMEs in your local area, supporting apprenticeships, diversifying the trades sector to create more opportunities for women and ethnic minorities, and helping green more homes.
Labour’s new plan for housebuilding, to deliver 1.5m new homes by 2030, is a welcome commitment. It would not only put more roofs over people’s heads but will help fuel investment in skills to meet the extra demand for builders and other trades that would follow. So the trade industry has a critical role to play in both delivering on these targets and in the upkeep of these new homes. By working together we can ensure sufficient trade capability to help meet the country’s needs.
Checkatrade is committed to addressing our industry’s skills shortage. To date, we’ve provided over 500 schools with careers toolkits that encourage under 16s to consider a role in the trade sector and used our network to support adult learners in landing apprenticeships. That’s why we welcome Labour's promise of delivering regional skills through the establishment of Skills England and the rollout of Technical Excellence Colleges. Together, we can explore joint opportunities to help support training through the Checkatrade platform.
Whatever happens in the next Election, Checkatrade and our members will be working closely with cross-party stakeholders to make sure the growing need for local skills is met and that Britain has the human capital required to get back building. And to return to the heart of today: getting this right can turbocharge opportunities for the SMEs driving our economy.
Setting the UK up for long-term success will demand great ideas, real action, and the coming together of policymakers and elected members with businesses of all shapes and sizes.
I am keen for the Labour Party - indeed any prospective government, as well as the business voices in this room - to consider Checkatrade a partner in helping deliver on our shared goals of job creation, household aspiration, and spreading opportunity across the UK.
That makes me and the team excited for the conversations ahead - both today and beyond. Thank you for listening.
