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Your views on the economy

ended 12. December 2025

Tomorrow morning, at 07:00, the latest GDP data (for October) is being published. Ahead of that, we're keen to hear how business has been for you in the final three months of the year — and how confident you are about 2026. Some questions below. Respond in text and/or video format (straight into the mobile app or you can upload a file via the desktop). 

  • How has business been in the last quarter of the year to date — and in 2025 overall?
  • What have been the biggest challenges for you this year?
  • What would help your business right now?
  • Are you confident about 2026 or wary (please explain why)?

Any other thoughts about the state of the economic nation, send them across. 

6 responses from the Newspage community

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Mitali Deypurkaystha
AI Governance Strategist & CMO at AISensa
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
This fourth quarter has felt like operating a business inside a washing machine on the spin cycle. While we wait for the GDP figures to confirm what most of us already know, the real story is not in the headline number but in the grinding reality of doing business in modern Britain.

Labour costs have spiked thanks to Budget generosity that businesses get to fund, interest rates remain punitive for anyone wanting to invest or expand, and regulatory compliance now requires a dedicated compliance officer where once a filing cabinet sufficed.

What would help right now is not another government initiative with a acronym and a press release, but basic economic competence. Lower business rates, predictable tax policy, and interest rates that reflect economic reality rather than inflation paranoia.

As for 2026 confidence, that depends entirely on whether this government grasps that businesses create wealth and jobs, not Treasury departments with ambitious spreadsheets.
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Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
Sadly, all the pre-Budget kite-flying by Reeves has not made the UK economy soar. Business performance in Q4 2025 continues to be subdued and uneven. The biggest challenges have been a significant labour-cost shock due to rising wages and persistent skills shortages, alongside sustained high input prices and interest rates that restrict investment and consumer demand. To improve, businesses urgently need a sustained commitment to investment tax relief (like permanent Full Expensing) to boost capital expenditure, coupled with a clearer path to lower interest rates to stimulate demand. My outlook for 2026 is cautiously wary. Only my international clients seem upbeat, reporting good opportunities overseas, helped by a weakening Pound. Domestic-oriented businesses expect another tough year in 2026, with the economy continuing to slow down, driven by the full impact of current high rates and continued global headwinds. Any economic growth will be on the low side and fragile.
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Commercially, as an automation specialist, the Budget's been brilliant for my business: make workers more expensive, add some inflationary pressure on inputs, and suddenly everyone needs automation systems.

But as a citizen, watching the economy stutter for months while this fiscal fandango played out has been deeply frustrating. Businesses and individuals made critical decisions based on figures the Chancellor massaged to suit the government's backbench welfare agenda, not economic reality.

This mishandling is making all businesses wary and that always adds downward pressure on growth. There will be winners and losers next year, and the Chancellor's decided small businesses are in the loser camp before they even left the starting blocks.
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Patricia McGirr
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
Debt is the only industry booming, fuelled by AI and a budget that even handed HMRC £12bn to ramp up enforcement activities. The burden will fall hardest on the self‑employed and micro businesses already running on fumes. The budget promised much but delivered little: policy built on politics, not fact, taxation rooted in welfare doctrine, not growth; and a government that can’t define what a working person is while scalping business owners. 'Levelling up' has become shorthand for double standards; headline optimism masking lived reality. Families are stretched, SMEs are squeezed, and GDP figures cannot capture the strain behind the stats. 2026 won’t be about confidence; it will be about survival of families and small businesses. As we line up for more misery, governance and safeguarding vulnerable customers will become central. I’m already seeing lenders, corporates and service agencies shoring up risk, resilience and reputation; proof they know what’s ahead.
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Rohit Parmar-Mistry
Founder at Pattrn Data
While big corporates will be busy building 'Death Stars' in 2026 — bloated, expensive AI projects that look pretty in boardrooms but explode in the real world — SMEs have a tactical advantage. The mistake is thinking you need a robot army. You don't just build 'Iron Man suits' for your staff. Professional services firms are bleeding profit on admin. Use automation to take robotic work off your humans so they can actually speak to clients. The businesses that treat AI as a tool for efficiency, not a replacement for people, are the ones who will survive the economic squeeze.. The hype merchants are here to stay but ignore them. It’s time to stop the theatre and focus on the engine