LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – British businesses turned their most pessimistic in three years at the end of 2025 and their mood \u200bworsened after finance minister Rachel Reeves’ budget at the end \u200cof November, a survey published on Wednesday showed.<\/p>\n
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and \u200cWales (ICAEW) said its gauge of business confidence fell to -11.1 in the fourth quarter, its lowest since the end of 2022 and down from -7.3 in third quarter.<\/p>\n
Confidence slid across the September-to-December period and fell from -10.7 before Reeves’ budget on November \u206026 to its final \u200creading 0.4 points lower.<\/p>\n
Last week another closely watched survey, the S&P Purchasing Managers’ Index, showed only a marginal rise \u200din business sentiment in December, in contrast to initial estimates of more of a pick-up after budget uncertainty lifted.<\/p>\n
Reeves announced 26 billion pounds ($35 billion) of tax increases \u200bbut delayed most of them and spared employers the kind of \u200chit included in her first budget in 2024 when she raised a payroll tax.<\/p>\n
Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer are trying to speed up Britain’s slow pace of economic growth and have said they will create the conditions to boost business investment.<\/p>\n
The ICAEW survey also showed:<\/p>\n
* Confidence has fallen \u2060for six quarters in a row; * A \u200brecord 64% of firms said tax was \u200ba growing challenge,more than double the share at the time of the 2024 election; * Half of businesses worried about regulation, \u200dthe highestproportion for \u2060more than seven years, reflecting concerns overnew employment rights legislation; * Confidence among exporting businesses rose, suggestingdomestic issues were behind the overall drop; * \u2060Indicators of sales activity in the months ahead improved; * 1,000 accountants took part in the \u200ctelephone surveybetween October 8 and December 11.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7426 pounds)<\/p>\n
(Writing by \u200cWilliam Schomberg; editing by David Milliken)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – British businesses turned their most pessimistic in three years at the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,61737,12740,393,71839,4884,154734,1144,77438,619,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-694689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-business-confidence","11":"tag-business-investment","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-finance-minister","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-icaew","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-prime-minister-keir-starmer","18":"tag-rachel-reeves","19":"tag-scotland","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115891738062279426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694689","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=694689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}