{"id":381200,"date":"2025-08-28T23:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381200\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:43:13","slug":"scotland-outpaces-uk-in-business-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381200\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland outpaces UK in business confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Business confidence in Scotland rose three points during August to 59%, according to the latest Business Barometer from Bank of Scotland.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Companies in Scotland reported slightly lower confidence in their own business prospects month-on-month, down five points at 65%. However, when taken alongside their optimism in the economy, up nine points to 52%, this gives a headline confidence reading of 59% (vs. 56% in July).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A net balance of 70% of businesses in the country also expect to increase staff levels over the next year, up 47 points on last month.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotsecurewest.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Scot-Secure West 2025 \u2013 Glasgow\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img class=\"lazyload\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1756424593_929_Copy-of-DIGIT.FYI-In-Article-Ads-750-x-210-px-6.jpg\" alt=\"Scot-Secure West 2025 \u2013 Glasgow\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking ahead to the next six months, Scottish businesses identified their top target areas for growth as investing in their team, for example through training (59%), evolving their offer, for example by introducing new products or services (39%) and entering new markets (39%).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>National Picture<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, UK business confidence rose two points in August to 54%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While firms\u2019 confidence in the wider economy dropped three points to 44%, their optimism in their own trading prospects rose five points to 63%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">London was the most confident part of the UK in August (69%), followed by the East of England (64%).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Sector Insights<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Manufacturing firms saw confidence up 14 points this month, to 62%. This level was previously seen in 2015. Retailers also saw an increase in confidence this month, with levels up 13 points to 57%, a five-month high. However, construction firms confidence fell by five points to 40%, a four-month low while confidence in service sector firms also fell eight points to 53%.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommended reading<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Martyn Kendrick, Scotland Director at <a href=\"https:\/\/business.bankofscotland.co.uk\/25m-plus-turnover\/online-services\/commercial-banking-online.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bank of Scotland Commercial Banking,<\/a> said:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s encouraging to see Scottish business confidence continuing to strengthen, outpacing the UK average for a fourth month in a row.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe strong focus on team investment and widespread hiring plans demonstrates that Scottish firms are taking a long-term view of growth, building the capabilities they need for sustained success. We\u2019ll continue to provide our support to help businesses across the country achieve their ambitions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business confidence in Scotland rose three points during August to 59%, according to the latest Business Barometer from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[2015,748,61737,1700,3374,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-381200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-bank-of-scotland","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-business-confidence","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-employment","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115109049505849293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}