Our story
The high street doesn't have
to keep getting smaller.
Free bill benchmarking for UK rural small businesses — built by someone who lives here
CostShield was built by someone who has lived in rural England for 25 years, watched local businesses close one by one, and spent 20 years in financial services learning exactly why — and what to do about it.
"Small businesses, dealing with large suppliers, on their own, without the time or the tools to fight back."
Why I started CostShield
Watching villages change
I have lived in rural Hampshire for the last 10 years. Before that, a village in Buckinghamshire. My family has grown up in these communities — at school, at the cricket club, at the rugby club, and in the local businesses that have always defined what makes a small town feel like home.
Over the last few years, I have watched the high streets in villages around us change in ways that are hard to ignore. Shops that have been there for decades — the butcher, the pub, the travel agent, the barber, the local bank, the toy shop — have closed or changed hands. One by one.
I am not a farmer. I am not a publican. But my daughter has worked on local farms, at shoots, and now manages a rural pub. Through her, and through the community around us, I have heard directly about the cost pressures these businesses face: energy bills that doubled without warning, telecoms contracts that bear no relation to the service received, waste collection costs that vary wildly with no obvious reason.
What I bring to it
20 years of financial services. Built for the people who never had access to it.
I have spent 20 years in London's financial services industry — in technology leadership roles at two global banks. Before that, I worked across technology product businesses where the commercial reality was always the same: the organisations with the best data made the best decisions. The ones without it paid more, took longer, and often did not know it.
Over that time, I watched enterprise businesses deploy increasingly powerful analytics tools to understand and reduce their operational costs. Benchmarking. Automated spend analysis. Supplier comparison at scale. These capabilities existed — but they were built for organisations with entire procurement teams and six-figure software budgets.
They were not built for a farm shop in Hampshire, or a B&B in the Cotswolds, or a rural pub trying to keep the lights on.
Leigh Cummings
Founder, CostShield
The idea
A clear, honest answer to the question every business owner is quietly asking
"Am I paying the right amount for this — and if not, what should I do about it?"
CostShield is built on a simple premise: rural and semi-rural small businesses deserve the same quality of cost intelligence that large organisations take for granted. Not jargon. Not a complex software platform that requires a consultant to implement.
A business owner uploads their bills. We review them against independently sourced benchmarks across energy, telecoms, water, waste, and card processing. Within 24 hours, they receive a plain-English report that tells them what they are paying, what comparable businesses pay, and where the savings are.
No sales pitch. No long contracts. No pressure. Just the information a small business needs to make a better decision.
25 years
Living in rural Hampshire & Buckinghamshire
20 years
Working in Financial Services with 2 Global Banks — where I built the cost intelligence skills behind CostShield
5
Cost Areas Benchmarked across sectors and UK regions
Why this, why now
The capability exists. What was missing was support.
Real pressure on rural businesses
Energy costs have not returned to pre-2022 levels. Supply chains remain unpredictable. The pool of local labour is smaller than it once was. In this environment, operational efficiency is not a nice-to-have — it is the difference between staying open and closing.
The tools have never been more accessible
As AI tools have matured to the point where they can do in minutes what previously took analysts weeks, the moment arrived to do something about it. The gap between what large organisations can access and what small businesses actually get has always struck me as both unfair and unnecessary.
Built from lived experience
CostShield is built from 20 years of technology and product experience, shaped by 25 years of living in and caring about rural communities. It is not a product built by someone who read about the problem in a report.
A genuine belief
The high street does not have to keep getting smaller. The businesses that define what makes a small town feel like home deserve the same tools as the organisations that have always had the advantage. That is what CostShield is for.
Ready to find out what you're overpaying?
Upload one bill. Get a plain-English benchmark report within 24–48 hours. Free, with no obligation.