Posted By Gbaf News
Posted on May 25, 2018
The latest Thames Valley Business Barometer reveals over three quarters of businesses in the region are feeling confident about the UK economy
A sneak preview of results from the Spring 2018 Thames Valley Business Barometer survey, taken between late March and early May this year, shows that business confidence across the region has significantly improved.
Over three quarters (77%) of businesses stated that economic confidence had stayed the same or improved over the last six months, while only 23% felt that economic confidence had deteriorated. This is a strong increase from the Autumn 2017 survey results that found just over half (53%) of respondents felt that economic confidence had stayed the same or increased.
Order books, pipeline, turnover and profitability all show improvement since last autumn, supporting this robust picture.
Positivity over the expected impact of Brexit on businesses in the Thames Valley has increased slightly with 29% of business leaders in the region expecting that leaving the EU will either have a positive impact on their business or that they will see no change, compared to 24% last autumn who thought the same. Just over a quarter (26%) of businesses expect Brexit to have a negative impact on their businesses while the remaining 45% are undecided and believe that it is too early to say.
The Thames Valley Business Barometer, which is published twice yearly, has been tracking business confidence and performance across the region since 2012. It is a collaboration between accountants and business advisers BDO LLP and disruptive-tech PR and marketing agency, C8 Consulting.
Business leaders from the Barometer Panel got together in May to discuss the early findings at a roundtable hosted by BDO and C8. The full survey results, including a look at the environmental practices of businesses across the region, local company profiles and a write up of the panel discussion, will be published in the next Business Barometer report in July 2018 and will be available from either C8 Consulting’s (www.c8consulting.co.uk) or BDO’s website (www.bdo.co.uk).