Buying a Small Business
Buying a Small Business in Britain
Know what you are buying before you pay for it
Edition English
The short version
The seller has read the papers. You have not. This book is the message you send before anybody names a price: five documents, one of which the law obliges the seller to give you.
We read 1,222 British businesses for sale on one portal on 12 September 2026 and took the figures one by one. Then the checks: whether the money is real, the lease that does not end on its printed date, Scotland, the tied pub and the franchise, the staff who come with their past, and the licence that does not come with the keys.
What’s inside
- 1What a British small business actually is
- 2What it takes, and what is left of it
- 2bWhether the money is real
- 3Where they are sold, and who is standing in the way
- 4Freehold, leasehold, or neither
- 4bThe tied pub, and everything that works like one
- 5The lease does not end by itself
- 6The seven ways the landlord says no
- 7The clause that deletes the last two chapters
- 8Scotland: one year, twenty-one days
- 9The staff come with the business, and so does their past
- 10The document the law makes him give you
- 11The VAT number you must not accept
- 12The licence does not come with the keys
- 13What the register tells you about the seller, for nothing
- 13bThe money on top of the price: the first thirteen weeks
- 14The Leadmill: forty-five years of goodwill, and a landlord who wanted the room
- 15The Railway Bell: the landlord who could not show the money
- 16"A going concern" is not a phrase you can write down
- 17The order book: what the seller's words actually promised
- 18What cannot be checked
- Appendices
- A1Every question, in order, on one sheet
- A2The regulation 11 letter
- A3The free checks, and where to do them
- A4What the words in the advert mean
- A5Reading a lease in twenty minutes
- A6What each trade's price bought, September 2026
- A7If the business has no door
- A8The twenty-minute register check
- A9What cannot be checked — the short list
- A10Where every number in this book came from
- A11The words in this book
- A12One page to take with you
From the book
British businesses for sale, read on one portal on 12 September 2026.
Adverts that name a price. Fewer than two in ten name a profit.
Pub adverts that say the pub is tied.
Appendix A10 gives the source of every number in this book.
Editions
- EnglishBuying a Small Business in Britain
Know what you are buying before you pay for it
On Amazon
Every edition of this book is available now as a Kindle edition.
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EnglishBuying a Small Business in Britain
Chapter 1, “What a British small business actually is”, is free to read before you decide.
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