Jonny,
Everyone in business has competion except for those lucky enough to to come up with something at the cutting edge, or perhaps to be responsible for starting a fad (cabbage patch kids, rubiks cube) or a legal requirement (corgi registration etc).
However, competion should be fair, and on a level playing field, your excuse, that you are a new business, and that you should, perhaps, be given a break because of this is quite frankly pathetic. There is already, far too much of this attitude within the industry, many so called comapanies operate exactly in this way, the client's of these so called cleaning companies are well aware of this fact, and use this to their supposed advantage, by using these sorts of companies to further drive down prices.
Plimsol, the people who publish information on the state of the cleaning industry have published the fact that out of the top 2500 companies 500 of them are in very real danger of failing, if we assume that this assumption can be made across the board for the whole industry, you can see that the outlook does not look good.
So what to do?
Ignore employment law?
Ignore Health & Safety?
Diddle the taxman?
By operating outside the law in anyway, all these sort of companies do is further drive down the price of cleaning making the problem worse, sell your expertise, sell value, sell reliabilty, that is the only way to build business.
Craigs advice, "do what you have to do, we all take risks...." is typical of a great many within the industry, yes, running a business is all about risk, but these risks can be managed, risking peoples lives, or operating your business outside of the law, in my view is not a risk, it is simply illegal, any business that operates in this way, is not a business at all, it is just simply a wide boy trying to make a buck!
Gary's comment, is simply pointing out the fact that your website gives the impression that you know what your doing and that you comply with all current legislation, it, in my opinion is not a wise move to state that you adhere to the legislation, then when push comes to shove, you actually do not comply with the law. If your government contracts ever come to hear that you flout the rules, you will lose those faster than you can say jack robinson!
At the end of the day, you will make the decision, you will probably get away with it this time, but if you keep doing business this way, sooner or later, the S**** will hit the fan, it might be employment law, it might be Health & Safety, or perhaps even HM customs & Revenue will ask you to explain your business dealings. Even if none of these things happen for the next few years, continuing to operate in this way, you will have to break more and more rules in order just to get more business, and if you try to make the changes required in order to comply with the law how are you going to explain the price increases to your existing customer base? So in fact, you will become trapped in a viscious circle, of low pricing, and operating your business illegally!
I have no idea of your set up, but here's a few idea's:
Offer your staff the work as overtime.
Agency staff.
Strike up a partnership with another firm in the area, use their staff, pay their invoice when due.
The above assumes that you take due care and dilligence regarding training, insurance etc.
Regards,
Rob