Think of a business that may prosper even when dark clouds appear on the economic skyline. Not easy, but the answer seems to be to help others to help themselves when austerity looms.

Rachel Trett, 32, who in May last year lost her job with the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (RNID), at a time when there was a 54 per cent increase in unemployment in the Wallingford area in which she lives, came up with the idea of running training sessions in basic skills for people who were taking the plunge and going into business alone.

She started the Wallingford Business Centre, which this month started giving its first training sessions in fundamental skills such as how to read profit and loss accounts, bookkeeping, and dealing with the media — and has already posted many of its start-up sessions in its first month of operations as ‘fully booked’ on its website.

Ms Trett said: “I myself consulted with Nicky Angel from Business Link and Julie Johns at SEEDA (South East England Development Agency) before starting the centre, but I noticed lots of people becoming sole traders need help.

“And I enjoy helping people. At RNID I trained people and also trained trainers.”

Ms Trett’s fellow directors at the Wallingford Business Centre are Anna Rowe, 38, who owns accountancy company Balance of Wallingford, and her business consultant husband Chris.

The new centre will use experts in various fields to give the training sessions.

For example, Ms Trett will run workshops on complying with the Disability Discrimination Act. The average fine for not complying, by the way, is £16,000.

Media relations workshops will be run by Paul Erlam, who has a background in both journalism and public relations, having worked at Meridian, where he was a trainer.

Ms Rowe said; “From my own experience, too many people starting out in business on their own account fail within six months. They need help.”

But is not this help already available from such organisations as Business Link and SEEDA?

“Not for businesses that are already set up and going. We have found a genuine gap here, we think,” she answered.

In any case, with a new prime minister in power, who has said he will abolish regional development agencies, such as SEEDA, and public spending on training generally under threat, a private initiative on a local level such as this may well prove increasingly attractive to people with business ideas in their heads and redundancy pay in their pockets.

Now this young business is negotiating to take on offices in Wallingford, though Ms Rowe said she could not say where until “the ink was dry on the contract.”

In the meantime, workshops are being held in comfortable surroundings provided by the Shillingford Bridge Hotel, with the cost of a four-hour training session at £50 or £95 for two (presumably a bid to tempt in couples running businesses between them).

Ms Trett said: “We have deliberately limited numbers of people attending courses to ten, in order to make sure everyone benefits as much as possible.”

A glance at the centre’s website earlier this month was all I needed to see that this business is off to an encouraging start.

The first three courses offered — Practicalities of Setting Up Your Own Business, Understanding Profit and Loss and the Disability Discrimination Act — were all fully booked; surely a state of affairs that most owners of just-hatched businesses only dream about.

Ms Trett said: “We have hundreds of ideas for workshops in the future and we are looking for experts in a lot of fields to work with us.”

Certainly ideas come to mind thick and fast when you begin to think about snags and barriers that face anyone who is running, or has just started, a business.

For example, what about dealing with the problems that people, used to going out to work, face when they suddenly find themselves working from home?

Do you build a shed in the garden? How do you protect yourself from disturbance, perhaps from the family, or even from pets, during working hours, etc.?

These courses might give hints on how to solve such practicalities.

Also, Ms Rowe will shortly begin a series of six-week courses, consisting of one two-hour workshop each week, on the ongoing tasks of managing finance for small traders and, indeed, anyone who has only recently launched a small business.

She will also explain the mysteries of using financial computer software such as QuickBooks.

All in all, here is hoping the Wallingford Business Centre will be a winner for its owners and bring help to people in the current cloudy economic climate.

Name: Wallingford Business Centre Established: 2010 Managing director: Rachel Trett Number of staff: Flexible Annual turnover: N/A

Contact: 07792 182447 Web: www.WallingfordBusinessCentre.co.uk