1,000 city firms in difficulty

NEW figures show that more than 1,000 Portsmouth businesses are in ‘significant distress’ – two per cent more since the last three months of last year.

Begbies Traynor’s ‘Red Flag Alert’, which monitors the financial health of British companies, has found that the sectors under stress include construction and support services.

However, the two per cent increase Portsmouth saw in struggling businesses from October-December 2021 to January-March 2022, actually represented a 15 per cent year-on-year decrease on the same period last year.

Nationally, the latest Red Flag Alert research for Q1 2022 recorded 581,596 businesses in significant distress, flat on the previous quarter.

However, the figures showed a marked increase in the numbers of businesses deemed to be in ‘critical’ distress, with a 19 per cent year-on-year increase.