{"id":79957,"date":"2023-01-24T00:20:06","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T00:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/"},"modified":"2023-01-24T00:20:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T00:20:06","slug":"warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"<div >\n<p ><b >Fears are growing that 2023 could see a spate of corporate failures as the cost-of-living crisis lingers.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >The number of firms on the brink of bankruptcy rose by more than a third late last year, bankruptcy firm Begbies Traynor said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >This number is expected to rise due to higher costs and cuts in consumer spending.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Paul Jones, co-founder of brewery Cloudwater Brew, said the pressure felt like a &#8220;never-ending nightmare&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Julie Palmer, a partner at Begbies Traynor, said they are getting more and more calls from business owners like Mr Jones worried about going ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Mr Jones said his Manchester-based company has been in survival mode since March 2020, with high costs, debt, low consumer confidence and post-Brexit trade woes all weighing on the business. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;The costs for me were pretty grim,&#8221; he said.  &#8220;I have a heart condition from stress and I constantly feel at the limit of what I can personally handle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >His thoughts are on closing his store &#8220;probably once a month since 2020,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;I feel like it&#8217;s either not possible or not worth going on,&#8221; he said.  &#8220;We will continue. What else can we do?&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >However, he remains optimistic about business prospects in 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Begbies Traynor said the number of companies in critical financial difficulty rose 36% in the last three months of 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >A company is in critical financial distress if it has more than \u00a35,000 in district court judgments or a winding-up petition against it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >The number of district court judgments served against companies during the same period increased by 52% compared to 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<div >\n<ul >\n<li>Energy bill support for companies is to be reduced from April<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Ms Palmer said low interest rates and credit have helped businesses so far.  In the pandemic, Covid credit and a longer tax payment time had meant support continued.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;[The support] everything seems to be ending at the same time, and there&#8217;s really nothing on the horizon to replace them,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >A backlog in bankruptcy courts over Covid has also delayed some company failures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;Courts were closed to business so no one could take recovery action against non-payers and we are seeing those cases being enforced now,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >This cocktail of challenges has already proven deadly for some. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >Chef Mary-Ellen McTague founded a restaurant The Creameries in Manchester in 2018.  It received rave reviews and traded well until the pandemic hit the following year and business never fully recovered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >High energy costs were the last straw.  She had to close the restaurant in September last year. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;It became obvious that no matter how hard I worked, how hard I tried, how many different tactics we tried to reverse it, we were just never going to get enough customers through the door for it to work.  And that was a terrible moment,&#8221; said Ms McTague.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >She said running a business at such a difficult time took a tremendous emotional toll. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;I think it can be a really lonely experience to be in that position,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >\u201cWhen you are the leader of a small business, you have close relationships with your employees, your suppliers.  And you don&#8217;t want to upset anyone, so don&#8217;t necessarily talk about it with your friends, family or even your significant other,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;You don&#8217;t want to upset your children.  There is a lot of trying to keep the worries away from others, which means you carry them within you. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;There&#8217;s still a lot of stigma and that sense of shame that things aren&#8217;t working out, even if it&#8217;s completely out of your hands.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >She admitted she had mixed feelings when she finally had to close the shop <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;When you get to the point where you see what&#8217;s going on and you can&#8217;t do better, there&#8217;s definitely a sense of relief afterwards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >NatWest boss Alison Rose said that while Britain&#8217;s largest corporate lender has yet to see widespread corporate failures, she is concerned that companies are not, or not confident enough, about investing in the future.  <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >\u201cThanks to very low business confidence, we see very little investment.  This is a real concern for me because it will hamper future growth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >But there is also reason for optimism in 2023, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >&#8220;If you think we&#8217;ve had a global pandemic, the end of low interest rates, a war in Europe, massive price hikes &#8211; what we&#8217;ve seen is incredible resilience in the UK business,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div >\n<p >\u201cWe also have full employment, which is really positive.  We are seeing a record number of startups and banks like ours in a strong position to support clients.  So it&#8217;s a tough environment, but we should never forget how resilient the business owners were.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fears are growing that 2023 could see a spate of corporate failures as the cost-of-living crisis lingers. The number of firms on the brink of bankruptcy rose by more than a third late last year, bankruptcy firm Begbies Traynor said. This number is expected to rise due to higher costs and cuts in consumer spending. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v18.1 (Yoast SEO v18.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Warning that thousands of firms face collapse - Tahrir News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fears are growing that 2023 could see a spate of corporate failures as the cost-of-living crisis lingers. The number of firms on the brink of bankruptcy rose by more than a third late last year, bankruptcy firm Begbies Traynor said. This number is expected to rise due to higher costs and cuts in consumer spending. [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Tahrir News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/\",\"name\":\"Tahrir News\",\"description\":\"News all over the world\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/\",\"name\":\"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse - Tahrir News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/5eb9492fbc67154812b39589e826b6e4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Business\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/category\/business\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/5eb9492fbc67154812b39589e826b6e4\",\"name\":\"megahed\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ee3294b28670178246ce92a6679bf959bc435d2fcd9cb9ab078702487c106df?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ee3294b28670178246ce92a6679bf959bc435d2fcd9cb9ab078702487c106df?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"megahed\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse - Tahrir News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse","og_description":"Fears are growing that 2023 could see a spate of corporate failures as the cost-of-living crisis lingers. The number of firms on the brink of bankruptcy rose by more than a third late last year, bankruptcy firm Begbies Traynor said. This number is expected to rise due to higher costs and cuts in consumer spending. [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/","og_site_name":"Tahrir News","article_published_time":"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/","name":"Tahrir News","description":"News all over the world","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#webpage","url":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/","name":"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse - Tahrir News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00","dateModified":"2023-01-24T00:20:06+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/5eb9492fbc67154812b39589e826b6e4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/01\/24\/warning-that-thousands-of-firms-face-collapse\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Business","item":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/category\/business\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Warning that thousands of firms face collapse"}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/5eb9492fbc67154812b39589e826b6e4","name":"megahed","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ee3294b28670178246ce92a6679bf959bc435d2fcd9cb9ab078702487c106df?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ee3294b28670178246ce92a6679bf959bc435d2fcd9cb9ab078702487c106df?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"megahed"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}