The weather has taken a turn again! This festive season has been filled with relentless storms, after Storm Bert battered the UK, Storm Conall brought an arctic blast, and now Storm Darragh’s high winds look set to blow many small businesses off track this year. Around 70% of smaller markets were forced to close in […]
More than 8 in 10 (81%) UK small businesses are prioritising new initiatives to boost their overall growth prospects for 2025. Increasing new business sales (43%) and reducing fixed costs (24%) are priority areas business owners want to focus on – but there’s also evidence the recent changes to employers’ National Insurance could significantly impact […]
Start Up Loans today announces that it has provided female founders in the South East with £50m in loans since the programme’s inception in 2012. In the regions outside of London, the South East has received the third highest volume of female funding in England, demonstrating it’s a key region for female entrepreneurship. Loans to […]
New research from Cloudways, a managed hosting platform provider, has revealed that UK small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) could lose up to £2.7bn in festive sales due to website errors and slow loading times. With 35% of Brits planning to shop with SMBs online this festive season, spending an average of £218.80 each, technical hurdles threaten […]
The British Business Bank has announced an increase to its ENABLE Funding commitment to Simply Asset Finance (“Simply”), one of the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent asset finance providers. This increased facility will allow Simply to provide more than £175m of finance to smaller businesses across the UK. In line with the ENABLE Funding […]
Economic uncertainty is on the rise for the UK’s 5.6 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) following the Autumn Budget, according to iwoca’s Q3 2024 SME Expert Index. The percentage of brokers reporting pessimism among their SME clients about the future has more than doubled, rising from 15% last quarter to 34%. Meanwhile, only one in […]
The British Business Bank today announces that its Growth Guarantee Scheme has supported more than £250m of finance to smaller businesses, since its launch as a successor to the Recovery Loan Scheme in July 2024. The Growth Guarantee Scheme is designed to support access to finance for UK smaller businesses as they look to invest […]
Brits are embracing shopping small, with shoppers willing to pay more to prioritise purchases from small businesses over larger competitors this holiday season, reveals new research from GoDaddy. Over half (54%) of shoppers aim to have their gift shopping for the festive season completed ahead of December, with seven in 10 reporting that, despite cost-of-living […]
Those who are looking to start a new hospitality business in the UK are being encouraged to offer added-value services for customers, as they look to navigate current market challenges. The call comes from The Cumberland Building Society, who said those who are new to the sector will face pressures such as rising costs, a […]
Small businesses across the country are urging government to honour their pre-election pledge to support the sector to enable the UK to hit future growth targets and save jobs. The National Enterprise Network (NEN), the country’s leading representative of enterprise support for start-up, small and micro-businesses, has released the results of its 2024 Business Barometer […]
