In the veterinary industry the trend over recent years has been for small practices to be swallowed up by large incorporated entities or 'corporates' with enviable buying power. Yet in the wider economy another trend is emerging.

Lord Young produced a report in May 2012 entitled "Make Business Your Business" the thrust of which is to support small businesses and start-ups. It refers back to the Bolton report of 1971 when small business was in decline; excessive bureaucracy and discrimination against small businesses were given as reasons for the decline but Lord Young also cites the "confiscatory levels of personal taxation that mitigated against people wanting to work for themselves".

A lot of veterinary surgeons already work as self-employed locums: According to Lord Young's report, growth in self-employment started in the '80s but very recently there has been a dramatic growth in the numbers of self-employed people to a high of 4.13 million and these contribute to the overall numbers of small businesses.

At the start of 2011 3.8% of businesses had ten employees or more, 21% of businesses employed 1-9 employees but 74% of private sector businesses employed nobody, the businesses being run by the owners. There was also a big jump in figures for self employment reported at the end of 2012.

Those statistics really bring home how damaging it is to the wider economy if there are barriers such as over-regulation, or lack of access to finance, that hamper the growth of small businesses. That over-regulation spills over into veterinary practice and sometimes the effects on veterinary practice are more acute than on business generally.

If you're thinking of running your own veterinary business, maybe you could read the report here and see how it might help you to get started.

However, if you're already running your own veterinary business you probably are a SME even if you don't see yourself this way. Maybe you would do well to join the Federation of Small Businesses and add your voice to the increasing number of businesses who want to see the barriers to growth removed: Every month 2,000 businesses join the existing FSB membership of 200,000 out of a total of 4.5 million SMEs in the UK. You can find out about the benefits of membership here. Membership of the FSB isn't expensive and the organisation lobbies to improve the trading environment for SMEs. Costs aren't high; for an individual it's £120 and even with 10 employees it's less than an individual BVA membership subscription.

Benefits include tax investigation insurance for the business owner, covering all business interests, VAT, aspect investigations and private lives.

As for veterinary corporates...most good businesses aspire to delegate in order to achieve growth, and in order to do so, one of the management mantras is "run your part of the business as if was your own". In fact, some of those veterinary corporates are actually franchises, so even under the 'corporate banner' they are still SMEs.

Personally FSB Membership looks like a no brainer to me.

If you 'think small' you may have a bigger and brighter future .