Business News

The UK’s largest event for the built environment, UK Construction Week (UKCW) Birmingham, made a welcome return to the NEC last week, with visitor numbers up 19% from last year. The show drew over 23,900 visitors from as far afield as Turkey, Brazil, Australia and Canada, and included a host of high-profile names including West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, Channel 4 presenter George Clarke, and BBC journalist and presenter Simon Jack.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has responded to the latest labour market statistics, below.

The Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarten, said: “Countries around the world are facing economic challenges, but today’s statistics remind us that the fundamentals of the UK economy remain resilient, with unemployment at its lowest point for almost 50 years.

Five percent of iPhone 14 production is expected to shift to the country this year, much sooner than analysts had anticipated. By 2025, a quarter of all iPhones the company makes could be produced in India, say analysts at investment bank JP Morgan.

West Midlands-based Thatch and Stone, an interior accessories company, is among 12 small businesses to be selected as champions of UK start-ups by Start Up Loans, part of the British Business Bank. The announcement comes as the programme celebrates its 10-year anniversary, having delivered more than 8,000 loans worth more than £73m to new business owners in the West Midlands since 2012.

MOT and vehicle servicing company Motorserv UK has been named the Solihull Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year. The business was crowned at the Solihull Chamber’s annual dinner and awards ceremony at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole, with 400 guests attending.

The awards night was sponsored by Solihull College & University Centre, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, and the Hilton Birmingham Metropole.

Ahead of Birmingham Tech Week, a fast-growing Solihull technology company is set to play a key role in the proceedings with a focus on diversity and inclusion.

Wise, located in Solihull town centre, will be playing a key role in Birmingham Tech Week, which is the UK’s largest regional technology festival.

NFU Mutual is warning ghost brokers who buy fraudulent policies on behalf of others that they will be found out and could face prosecution.

The mutual insurer is supporting the Insurance Fraud Bureau’s campaign to raise awareness of ghost broking, which can leave vulnerable people with inadequate or non-existent cover while ghost brokers line their pockets.

The Mayor of Dudley visited Netherton-based manufacturing firm Midtherm last week to unveil the business’s new-look logo. The visit was the latest in the Made in Dudley Borough series where senior leaders celebrate local firms who are doing great things.

Midtherm is a family-owned traditional UK manufacturing business with over 50 years’ experience specialising in the production of domestic and commercial flue systems.

Passengers planning on travelling during RMT strike action today (Saturday 8 October) and tomorrow (Sunday 9) are being warned not to get caught out with trains finishing much earlier than normal. Only nine trains per hour will depart from the station - that's compared to an average of 40 departures an hour on a non-strike weekday.

An accomplished team of Leominster designers and engineers have created a new ‘construction’ innovation that will change the way temporary steel supports are adjusted. Having experienced the pain of using ‘acrows’ first hand on a renovation project, Grove Design’s Austin Owens challenged his colleagues to come up with a solution that would transform the time-consuming process to make it safe, quick and easy to adjust the supports using a standard impact driver.

The Good Hotel Guide has revealed its annual list of 12 César winners and the Midlands is celebrating two major wins with The Falcon at Castle Ashby securing the Best Hotel in the region gong and The Double Red Duke in Clanfield taking home the Best Pub with Rooms award. In addition, properties in the region feature heavily in the Editor’s Choice lists, including Lake Isle in Uppingham in the Hotels on a Budget category and Hartwell House in Aylesbury making the top Spa properties set.

London may be the country’s banking hub, yet there are 15 places across the UK and several unexpectedly finance-friendly towns that offer surprisingly good career prospects.

A new study found that Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester offer the next best opportunities for a career in finance after London. Meanwhile, big districts like Cornwall, Bradford and Wiltshire disappoint in terms of pursuing a finance career, barely competing with much smaller places, like Stockport, Solihull, Elmbridge, and Windsor and Maidenhead.

Barbers in the West Midlands and Birmingham, who may be considering closing their shops because of the cost-of-living crisis, have been thrown a lifeline by a mobile male grooming business. Get Groomed Mobile Barbers is looking to recruit between 15 and 20 barbers in the Birmingham area at a time when soaring energy bills and other costs are making it increasingly difficult to keep shop premises going.

The Government has today revealed it wants to work with the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to create Investment Zones in the West Midlands, which will help drive economic growth, new homes, and jobs.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng also revealed that the Government plans to fast-track a number of vital transport schemes in the region to ensure work gets underway before the end of 2023.

A combination of measures announced in the budget today will create new opportunities for innovative start-ups and will help unlock private investment.

However, these measures must be underpinned by a collaborative and sustainable university sector to succeed says the National Centre for Universities and Business, the collective voice of UK business and universities. Today’s announcements set an economic growth goal of 2.5% and seek to drive up private investment through targeted tax and regulatory measures.  

Below is the stakeholder reaction on specific measures within the Growth Plan, including: alcohol duty, off-payroll working rules (IR35), VAT-free shopping and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme

Nuno Teles, Managing Director, Diageo Great Britain said: “Today we raise a Guinness to the Chancellor and PM, as a freeze in alcohol duty is great news for pubs, restaurants, and tourism.