{"id":2409,"date":"2018-04-12T10:54:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T10:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2409"},"modified":"2018-04-12T10:54:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T10:54:11","slug":"sme-confidence-soars-to-three-year-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/sme-confidence-soars-to-three-year-high\/","title":{"rendered":"SME confidence soars to three-year high"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Business confidence among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) soared to a three-year high in the first three months of 2018, a new study has revealed.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to the latest <em>SME Confidence Tracker<\/em> from funding group Bibby Financial Services, confidence among small businesses rose by six basis points between the final quarter (Q4) of 2017 and the first quarter (Q1) of 2018.<\/p>\n<p>SME confidence rose from 58 to 64 \u2013 the highest reading on record since the second quarter (Q2) of 2015, the report reveals.<\/p>\n<p>However, despite this notable increase in confidence, the tracker found that many small businesses are grappling with a number of problems which they believe are hindering their growth.<\/p>\n<p>For example, 27 per cent of SME respondents told the survey that they were having problems recruiting new skilled workers, while a further 23 per cent said that they had been forced to increase wages for existing members of staff in order to retain talent.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, almost half (43 per cent) of businesses said that they were currently holding back on investment due to political and economic uncertainties.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, overall business confidence appears to remain strong, as evidenced by other recent pieces of research such as commercial property group Citibase\u2019s latest <em>Business Confidence Index<\/em>, which found that 50 per cent of SMEs are feeling confident about Britain\u2019s short-term future despite the obvious challenges ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business confidence among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) soared to a three-year high in the first three months of 2018, a new study has revealed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2410,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions\/2410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}