Business News Round Up (30/05/2023)
North West businesses to delay investment due to corporation tax rise
The rise in corporation tax will force many North West companies to delay business investment, according to new research from accountancy and business advisory firm, BDO LLP. More than a third of North West businesses (35%) say they will pause future investment, after the headline rate of corporation tax rose to 25% at the beginning of April 2023, up from 19% in the 2022-23 tax year. BDO’s bi-monthly Economic Engine survey of more than 500 mid-market businesses has revealed that 45% of respondents will either have to make redundancies or take on fewer people, with the recent rise in corporation tax leading to a reduction in profits paid out to shareholders for 52% of businesses. Worryingly, more than a quarter (29%) said the uplift in corporation tax had prompted them to consider leaving the UK. While many businesses had hoped the Chancellor would publish a roadmap at the Spring Budget setting out a phased reduction in corporation tax rates, no such announcement was forthcoming. The much-debated move follows years of tax-cutting by the Conservatives, from a high of 28% in 2011 to 19% in 2017. In his March 2021 Budget, then Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced plans to increase the headline rate in a bid to aid the country’s financial recovery post-pandemic.
Cost of carbon offsetting ‘could double by 2030’
The cost of carbon offsetting could double for companies by 2030, new analysis has indicated. A new report from PwC found that FTSE 350 companies publicly reported voluntary carbon offset purchases totalling £38m in 2022. But analysis of BloombergNEF forecasts suggests that this same volume of offsets could cost companies more than £154m – an increase of 256% – by the end of the decade. It also found that prices were expected to continue to rise until 2050, with the cost of the same volume of offsets peaking at £356m, as businesses raced to meet net zero targets. The findings have prompted warnings that companies may fail to reach their targets if they find them unaffordable in future, having failed to consider rising offset price rises in their strategies. At least 80% of the volume of offsets reported to have been bought by FTSE 350 firms in 2022 were classed as “avoidance offsets”, which come from projects that avoid environmental impact, like renewable energy or deforestation. But there is growing momentum that avoidance offsets are not fit for purpose and only removal offsets – those generated from projects that extract or permanently store CO2 from the atmosphere – should be allowed.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/cost-carbon-offsetting-could-double-30101247
UK Biobank in £127.6m move to Manchester Science Park
UK Biobank, the large-scale biomedical database, is set to receive £127.6m to fund a move to purpose-built facility at Bruntwood SciTech’s Manchester Science Park. The funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure fund will cover a state-of-the-art robotic freezer that stores and retrieves 20 million biological samples that have been donated by UK Biobank’s 500,000 participants. The facility is being developed with the support of The University of Manchester. UK Biobank will continue to operate at multiple sites (including Bristol, Newcastle, Oxford, Reading, and Stockport) but its biological samples, laboratories, headquarters and around half of its 250 staff will move from their current home in Stockport, where they have been based for nearly two decades. “We are thrilled to be moving to a world-leading centre for genomics and data, where we can build on existing relationships with The University of Manchester, the NHS, and global pharmaceutical and data science companies,” said Prof Sir Rory Collins, principal investigator, and CEO of UK Biobank. “We are incredibly grateful to UKRI for their funding and support which will help increase UK Biobank’s unrivalled work. With this funding it will be quicker and easier for researchers from around the world to conduct vital research into common and life-threatening diseases and enable new scientific discoveries that improve human health.”
Nearly 8 in 10 Scottish shoppers would be sad to see local high street go
The vast majority of Scottish shoppers would be sad to see the death of the UK high street, according to new research from Accenture. Part of a survey of over 2,000 UK adults showed that, of those in Scotland who had visited their local high street in the last year, nearly 8 in 10 (77%) would feel sad if their local high street was no longer an option for shopping. Over 1 in 4 (26%) said they will always want to shop on their local high street, and half of Scottish consumers said they are unlikely to stop visiting their high street in the next year. However, around half of respondents (66%) feel that the high street doesn’t have everything that they need to do their weekly shop. They also agreed that the high street was no longer relevant and needs to change (56%). If a store on the high street which was part of respondents’ regular shopping routine were to close, a majority (60%) said that they would shop online instead, compared to just under 1 in 3 who would either switch to another high street brand (32%) or drive to find the same shop somewhere else (32%). This concern over the high street’s relevance could explain why nearly 3 in 10 (28%) warned they may stop shopping there in the next 5 years, increasing to over a third (37%) in the next 10 years.