{"id":3389,"date":"2019-12-23T15:01:42","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T15:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3389"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:01:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T15:01:44","slug":"sme-health-check-shows-positive-signs-in-the-third-quarter-of-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/sme-health-check-shows-positive-signs-in-the-third-quarter-of-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"SME Health Check shows positive signs in the third-quarter of 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) Health Check Index has shown recovery from the second quarter of 2019, with business confidence increasing.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The figures have bounced back from a record low in Q2, with the report by Virgin Money UK showing that the Index rose by 7.5 points to 49.<\/p>\n<p>The index measures a variety of factors across the business landscape, including;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Net business creation<\/li>\n<li>GDP<\/li>\n<li>Employment<\/li>\n<li>Revenue<\/li>\n<li>Business costs<\/li>\n<li>Capacity<\/li>\n<li>Lending<\/li>\n<li>Confidence<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The increase in the score represents a rise in economic activity, as well as a slowing of the rate of cost inflation and a decline in the cost of commercial rents.<\/p>\n<p>There were significant increases in nine of the 11 regions that the SME Health Check Index covers, with the West Midlands and Yorkshire showing the largest improvements.<\/p>\n<p>The report also looked at the impact that late payments have on small businesses, with 74 per cent experiencing late payments from customers in the last year.<\/p>\n<p>The research found that 13 per cent of all payments were late last year, with 88 per cent of SMEs stating that they have paid a supplier late themselves because of receiving a late payment from a customer.<\/p>\n<p>Gavin Opperman, Group Customer Banking Director at Virgin Money UK, said: \u201cThe Q3 SME Health Check results show cause for optimism. After a challenging start to the year, UK SMEs are showing definite signs of recovery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are undoubtedly challenges to navigate, and political uncertainty remains a thorn in our economy\u2019s side.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) Health Check Index has shown recovery from the second quarter of 2019, with business confidence increasing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,38,24,30,5,53,25,4,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389"}],"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=3389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3390,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions\/3390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}