The June 2025 Spending Review sets out ambitious plans for economic recovery and long-term growth with a strong emphasis on digital transformation and modernising labour force skills. How should UK businesses react and how could it affect them? Impact on sectors and skills Overall, government day-to-day spending will increase by 1.7% per year, while capital investment will grow by 3.6%
A month on from our last look at the UK economy and its prospects, our economic review for June 2025 has yet more evidence of just how volatile the global and domestic conditions are. A blizzard of bilateral trade deals involving Britain and variously, India, the USA and the EU have been announced, if not necessarily worked out in any
The announcement of the economic prosperity deal between the USA and the UK has generated much political and media ballyhoo. Despite the euphoria, cooler heads in many UK manufacturing sub-sectors are discounting the comments from the two countries’ leaders and their senior advisers, and instead they are scouring the detail-lite four and a half page deal document for anything tangible
Let’s start with a question: Was fraud prevention ever just a finance function? After 27 years working in fraud prevention across the private, public, and third sectors, I can confidently say the answer is no. Throughout my career, I’ve seen fraud fall under the remit of Audit, Risk, Legal, Compliance, Governance, Security, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and, yes,
In May last year, all the talk was about how vibrantly the activity in the UK services sector was accelerating. What a difference a year makes as the latest S&P Global UK Services PMI Index for April 2025 dipped below 50, indicating that the sector was contracting. This ended a 17-month run of growth. New order books at service companies
A month ago, all the economic buzz was about the Chancellor’s Spring Statement and the real-world implications as the significant cost hikes from the Autumn Budget finally landed with a shuddering thud onto the business models of UK companies. That seems a lifetime away already, as attention has moved on from more parochial considerations to the global trade turmoil unleashed on
