News

Late payment has been a perennial problem for smaller businesses, but new legislation progressing through Parliament could give SMEs significantly more power to fight back. The Commercial Payments Bill reaches report stage in the House of Lords on 15 September. The...

It was way back in the mid-1950s when the phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ was first coined at an Ivy League university computer science summer workshop - or that at least is what my Google-generated AI overview reliably informs me. However, as recently as 2018 few...

September has a way of concentrating the mind. The summer holidays are over, schools are back and for business owners the long run to Christmas has begun. For SMEs, this autumn brings an added complication. The Budget takes place on 28 October and, while speculation...

The arrival of the new '76' registration plate on 1 September should provide a welcome late-summer boost for Britain's car dealers. New plate day remains critical in the industry calendar, traditionally bringing buyers into showrooms and providing a useful barometer...

Britain may have basked in unusually hot weather this summer, but there has been little sunshine for some of the best-known names on the High Street. A fresh crop of insolvencies and restructurings shows that, for many retailers, the pressure is as intense as ever....

The number of hospitality businesses entering insolvency eased slightly in the first half of 2026, yet remained historically high, reflecting challenging trading conditions for the industry. Some 1,602 accommodation and food service companies, including hotels,...

Six months ago, we warned that a £5bn funding time bomb was ticking beneath local government balance sheets as the cost of providing support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) continued to outstrip available funding. Since then,...

More than five years after the first Covid-19 business support schemes closed, abuse of those loans remains the leading cause of director disqualifications. However, the Insolvency Service is also broadening its enforcement activity to tackle a wider range of director...

Last November, we highlighted an anomaly in UK university financing: unlike Further Education colleges, they have no dedicated insolvency framework for what should happen when an institution can no longer meet its obligations. The Government has now considered the...

For many owner-managed businesses, a Members’ Voluntary Liquidation (MVL) has long been regarded as the orderly final chapter of a successful company. The business has ceased trading or been sold, liabilities have been settled, shareholders wish to extract the...

There is little to suggest from the speed and brutality of Keir Starmer’s demise and the termination of a sixth Prime Ministerial tenure since June 2016 (by contrast the five previous Prime Ministers spanned a period of over 37 years) that the UK electorate is...

Six months ago, the outlook for UK construction appeared bleak. Unfortunately, despite recent hints of stabilisation, many builders are still waiting for the recovery to reach the site. The latest S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) edged...