Business confidence plunged last quarter at its fastest rate since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine after Rachel Reeves’s Budget loaded huge extra costs on to private sector employers, a new survey reveals today..
Accountancy body the ICAEW said its Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) – one of the largest surveys of business activity - put sentiment at just 0.2 on its index in the fourth quarter, the weakest reading since the same period in 2022. It was down from 14.4 in the previous quarter.
