UK Business Barometer

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For the March survey, we invited panellists to give their views on the business impact of the budget, The National Employer Training Programme, keeping in touch with contacts, media coverage for smaller businesses, choice of venue for client meetings plus the quarterly trends questions. The trends charts from the responses to the regular quarterly questions can be found on the project's website at www.ukbab.ac

188 Business Advisers responded to this Survey.

Survey Findings

Strong agreement on the first question emerged between respondents to the UK Business Advisers Barometer and respondents to the UK Business Barometer, the parallel monthly online survey of Businesses. 73% of UKBAB and 74% of UKBB thought this year's Budget would be neutral for their businesses. Of the remainder, the balance of opinion was that the impact would be negative, with 18% of both sets of respondents in this category.

The National Employer Training Programme offers fully subsidised training for employees and is being expanded across the UK. Panellists were asked to what extent they were aware of the NETP and it is apparent that as yet awareness is limited, because only 18% were highly or reasonably highly aware of the NETP, while 38% were not at all aware of it. UKBAB panellists were also asked how much they thought clients would benefit from using the programme, and 46% thought that clients benefit highly or reasonably highly from it, while only 5% thought there would be no benefit to clients.

Previous surveys have shown that networking is very important to many entrepreneurs and consultants, and the speed of follow-up to new contacts is an indicator of how pro-actively networking is used in business. Excluding responses of 'not applicable', 73% of UKBAB respondents get in touch either the next day or in the following week, and the corresponding figure for UKBB respondents is 66%.

Email emerged as the most popular means of follow-up contact for both UKBAB and UKBB respondents, followed by phone calls. Letters were rarely used and texting is very unpopular indeed.

74% of responding business advisers feel that issues confronting smaller businesses are not given adequate coverage in the media at all or hardly at all whereas only 1% is fully persuaded that coverage is adequate.

Although many business advisers operate out of office premises and advice centres, 51% of respondents to the March UKBAB say that over 75% of their appointments with clients take place at the clients' premises, and a further 17% visit clients for between 50% and 75% of their appointments.

Trends Questions

The average number of clients seeking business advice from our respondents dropped back in the first quarter of 2005.

There was an increase in the number wanting to start a business in the March quarter of 2004.

The ability to gain access to finance was rated as having improved slightly over the last quarter, in contrast to the previous three quarters.

The percentage of Advisers' clients finding that there is a shortage of skilled labour increased slightly on average during the March quarter.

In the March 2005 quarter, Advisers were on average slightly more optimistic about the continuance of their clients trading over the next year. 12% of Advisers consider that none of their clients will close over the next year, compared with 11% in December, while 69% thought that up to 10% of their clients might cease trading compared with 70% in the December 04 quarter. Expectations of higher numbers of business cessations held steady over the quarter at 19% who thought that over 10% of their clients might cease trading over the next 12 months.