Scottish companies see confidence falling

Confidence levels among Scottish businesses have slipped over the last six months in stark contrast to their counterparts south of the Border, a Bank of Scotland report today reveals.

The Business in Britain survey – based on data gathered after the snap general election was called – shows that the Scottish business confidence index, which measures a respondent’s expected sales, orders and profits over the next six months, eased to 19 per cent, from January’s score of 21 per cent.

The confidence index for England and Wales rose by 10 percentage points to 24 per cent.

The Business in Britain report, now in its 25th year, gathers the views of more than 1,500 UK companies, predominantly small to medium-sized businesses, and tracks the overall “balance” of opinion on a range of key performance and confidence measures.

Fraser Sime, regional area director for SME, Bank of Scotland, said: “Overall confidence in Scotland has decreased slightly since our last survey in January but remains positive.

“The fact that it remains only slightly lower than at the start of the year, despite the political uncertainty from a snap election, is a positive sign for underlying confidence in the region and is testament to the resilience of Scotland’s business owners.”

Meanwhile, the proportion of Scottish firms that said that they had experienced difficulty in recruiting skilled labour in the last six months increased to 45 per cent, compared with 34 per cent in January. 0 Fraser Sime says overall confidence still positive