Business confidence fell to its lowest level on record in September, driven by concerns over soaring costs, according to a survey of bosses.<\/p>\n
Topping the unease were labour costs, with energy prices also weighing on the outlook.<\/p>\n
Anna Leach, the chief economist at the Institute of Directors (IoD), said: \u201cBusiness confidence has plumbed new depths in September, following a fleeting improvement at the tag-end of summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cConditions worsened across the board, with cost expectations hitting a record high, driven notably by employment costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chancellor\u2019s conference speech rightly reiterated the role that fiscal credibility has in providing the platform for growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
She urged Rachel Reeves to deliver a budget in November that is growth-focused and \u201chas business at its heart\u201d.<\/p>\n
It came after two Bank of England<\/a> policymakers said UK inflation may not fall as fast as expected next year, as a recent spike in food prices could persist into 2026.<\/p>\n Clare Lombardelli, a deputy governor at the Bank, said central bankers should be careful about assuming inflation shocks are temporary.<\/p>\n Catherine Mann, who also sits on the Bank\u2019s nine-person rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC), said she thought Britain\u2019s inflation rate had become persistently high \u2013 although that did not mean further interest rate cuts were completely off the table.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that [an] inflation persistence scenario is playing out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Mann, who was speaking at a Financial Times event, and Lombardelli, who was attending a conference in Finland, voted against the BoE\u2019s most recent interest rate cut in August. They were outvoted by a majority of MPC members who said a slowdown in economic growth would support a fall in inflation over the next year to 2% from a likely peak of 4% in September.<\/p>\n Reeves said at the Labour conference that the economic stability provided by the government meant ministers could take some credit for five cuts to interest rates over the last year.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n However, predictions by leading economists that inflation will prove to be sticky, preventing further cuts by the central bank, would limit interest rate cuts, denting the chancellor\u2019s budget plans.<\/p>\n The MPC member Sarah Breeden, speaking at Cardiff Business School, adopted a more dovish stance than her fellow rate-setters. She said on Tuesday it was unlikely that the strength of inflation this year would persist into 2026.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cThe good news is that this \u2018hump\u2019 reflects external shocks, and in the current environment it is unlikely, in my judgment, to lead to additional inflationary pressures.<\/p>\n \u201cMoreover, I have not seen any evidence yet to suggest that the underlying disinflationary process from past shocks is veering off track. So far so good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business confidence fell to its lowest level on record in September, driven by concerns over soaring costs, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[79,18,19,17,227],"class_list":{"0":"post-95796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jobs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}