It will come as no surprise to you, I know, but just to get it on record, for the third year in a row, the official best small business in the entire UK is from Scotland.

Peterhead-based Amity Fish Company, led by Trawlermen star Jimmy Buchan, scooped the overall prize at last week’s Federation of Small Businesses awards in Glasgow, chiefly in recognition of how they pivoted from wholesale to e-commerce during the pandemic. As restrictions forced their hospitality trade customers to close, they switched to selling seafood products directly to consumers in their homes.

It is exactly that sort of innovation and determination that we are going to need in spades as we face up to trading in the high-cost, high-inflation world in which we now find ourselves.

Last week’s confirmation that inflation has hit a 40-year high of nine per cent was always going to grab the headlines. But, behind that stark figure, there is a lot more going on.

According to the figures, businesses’ input prices rose by nearly 19% in the year to April. At the same time, the prices at which their goods were sold only increased by 14%.

So, businesses are still doing everything they can to absorb costs and protect customers. But this cannot go on forever. Already-thin margins are being squeezed further, inevitably putting upward pressure on prices and storing up more inflation in the system.

This is backed up by what our members are telling us in Scotland. In the first quarter of this year, 46% saw their revenues increase. Encouraging signs, doubtless reflecting the boost derived from the last of the Omicron Covid restrictions being lifted.

However, while revenues seem to be rebounding, nine in ten businesses say overheads are up, meaning profits are down and predicted to drop further in the quarter ahead.

Little wonder, then, that the Bank of England is predicting double-digit-percentage inflation before the year is out.

It is easy (and true) to say that so much of what is driving this is outwith our control. It is also easy, when you look at the scale of the problem and the sacrifices people and businesses are already making to keep themselves afloat, to regard any intervention as insufficient.

But, while there is no single fix out there, there are certainly things that can be done to make the cost of doing business a little less prohibitive.

We could look, for example, at extending the business rates reliefs – initially introduced to help hospitality and leisure firms hardest hit by Covid restrictions – that are due to expire in the summer. Given that public funds are at a premium, we can focus this support on the independent businesses outside the scope of the Scottish Government’s increasingly important Small Business Bonus Scheme.

Equally, unused Covid grant funds could be repurposed to ease other costs.

And now that we are welcoming new and returning administrations to our council chambers, what better way for them to start than by freezing fees and charges on areas such as waste, licensing and planning?

We could also look at restructuring the mountain of Covid-related business debt, £4 billion in Scotland alone, which, amongst everything else, businesses are having to find money to repay.

But the big, seemingly intractable, driver here, obviously, is energy costs.

I do not pretend to offer an analysis of how we can influence global energy prices – other than we should use less of it and make more of it. But I do know that smaller firms should be getting a better deal.

It is simply not fair that small business customers – whose needs and relative bargaining positions are far more akin to those of a domestic consumer – do not enjoy any of the protections personal customers take for granted. Businesses do not benefit from a price cap, as imperfect as it is, and still pay value-added tax at 20%.

Of course, longer term, a major drive to decarbonise and take control of our energy security is our only option – and there are signs that current prices are encouraging businesses to reactivate investments aimed at boosting energy efficiency.

But this is a crisis now. Like Jimmy Buchan and his team at Amity, we need to move fast.

Colin Borland is director of devolved nations for the Federation of Small Businesses