Now, I relish holidays as much as the next person, if the next person happens to be Judith Chalmers, but as a small business owner I'm also very much aware of the challenges and the impact on business of taking time off work. Who picks up the slack, do they get paid extra for it, how does it affect the staff roster, who knows the answer to all the questions your key customers might ask in your absence, who is capable of that knowledge transfer, what's the short-term impact on customer service, sales and so on, who makes the decisions when you're not there and who carries the can when the proverbial hits the fan?

It's not just the week or two that you're away from your desk that affects business either. Who doesn't spend the last week before going on holiday slowing down and moving all the essential actions from their "urgent/top priority" list to the "pending/will tackle when I get back" list?

And on your return, after the archaeological dig to find your desk under the paperwork awaiting your input, you spend yet another week ramping back up to speed again and adding all the new actions that cropped up in your absence to the already full list you left behind hoping someone else would do it? It's no wonder that by our second day back we all feel as if we've never been away.

Roll out that scenario through all your staff and then multiply by the millions of other businesses out there and you'll recognise the massive productivity slump at holiday time.

Then add in the cost of recruiting extra staff to cover holidays, the loss of key staff on holidays, and consider how much harder it is to roster staff to ensure full cover at peak times. If your business is in the hotel, restaurant, retail or manufacturing sector, you will be disproportionately affected by holiday entitlement.

So it's little wonder that small business owners dread the holidays, not least because while employees are getting increased entitlement, they will be chained to their desks, unable – or unwilling – to take any time off.

A recent Direct Line for Business survey has revealed that while employees enjoy their paid holidays, small business owners fail to take time off; 23% failed to take any holidays at all in the past 12 months. And 79% had fewer than 22 days in the same period.

The research shows that, on average, small business owners take a total of just 13.3 days off a year, a clear demonstration that they are under pressure.

So while business owners are already struggling to cope with the implications of holidays, the Government is increasing the amount of statutory holiday entitlement for employees. Now why would they want to do that? Particularly in the current economic climate, surely it would make more sense to support SMEs rather than impose costly new legislation on them that will force their operational costs up at the very time they are battling to bring them down.

From next April, statutory holiday entitlement in the UK will increase to 28 days, having increased to 24 days from the original 20 as a gentle increment to ease the effects. The Government's own figures show that six million people stand to benefit from the increased number of statutory holidays. But the same report reveals that the estimated annual labour cost to business will be between £3.3bn and £4.4bn. And those companies with fewer than 50 employees will be impacted the most.

So why do we have so many holidays? Too many holidays, even, when there is a clear business impact which needs to be addressed. And what about the Parliamentary recess of 11 weeks? What businessman or woman takes a holiday when the chips are down, their business is threatened by a massive economic downturn and their senior managers are left behind to stew and plot their downfall?

In America, two weeks is the average, while in Canada you need to work for more than six years to get 16 days' paid holidays. In Singapore you will be lucky to get 14 days, yet we are happily increasing the statutory minimum to double that figure.

I appreciate everyone needs a break now and then, and I genuinely understand there must be a legal minimum of holidays to protect vulnerable workers, but where do we draw the line?

At the very least, it must be time to call a halt to the annual two-week trade fair holiday in the summer and the similar two-week closedown at Christmas. The seasonal effect on business just can't be afforded in economic times such as these, particularly when it is those industry sectors that traditionally enjoy these breaks, such as construction and manufacturing, that are currently hardest hit.

By the same token, I would suggest, Parliamentary recess should also face the axe. Sand castles and ice-cream when millions are facing fuel poverty and negative equity on their homes? Ironing out some of the seasonality and ensuring business continuity and productivity must surely be a common sense foundation for riding out the economic storm.