Planning reform and other reasons for business optimism in 2025

By Julian Pearce, founder and MD of communications agency Yasper.

It feels like you can barely move at the moment, without a set of worrying statistics being thrown at you. In the past few weeks, surveys by the Bank of England, the IoD and the CBI have all pointed towards fragile business confidence.

The BoE’s monthly ‘Decision Maker Panel’ showed that 60% of firms expected to lower their profit margins over the next 12 months, with many pointing to the anticipated increases in employer NI contributions as a factor. Meanwhile, the IoD’s economic confidence index plots the optimism of business leaders at its lowest level since April 2020.

So with all this doom and gloom flying around, what reasons can we find to be hopeful for what’s around the corner in 2025?

First of all, let’s look at property and the built environment. The industry will be taking stock of planning reforms over the festive break, with the Government having just published its Plan for Change.

One key focus of the proposals announced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is to remove ‘blockers’ in the system, with strengthened powers for planners, and decisions to be fast-tracked. There is even provision for compliant applications to bypass planning committees altogether. Planning reform is long-overdue in the UK and these measures come hand-in-hand with a re-write of the National Planning Policy Framework.

Moving onto the services sector, the start of a new calendar year has always represented a ‘fresh start’ for senior teams and afforded the opportunity to reset relationships or look for new partnerships. Aligned to this can be individuals’ fresh approach to networking.

Yasper’s latest insight report in association with the Chamber of Commerce – which aims to help a wide range of sectors, not just services – has some useful tips on how to use LinkedIn to its full potential as part of improved relationship building. How we interact with other businesses and individuals usually sees a sharp rise in interest in Q1 annually.

According to ICAEW’s Quarterly Business Confidence Monitor, confidence remained positive for all sectors, including manufacturing, repeating a trend that stretches back at least 18 months. The biggest concern remains demand for products, both domestically and internationally, but certainty and confidence will be set to rise once the policy direction (including all-important US tariffs) is better understood in early 2025.

And finally, in West Yorkshire at least, culture is set to take centre-stage. Bradford 2025 will be shining a spotlight on the district and as part of that, we can expect a knock-on effect for hospitality and tourism throughout the region.

As we move further into 2025, and on a more general note, a series of announcements are expected on topics such as infrastructure, industrial strategy, defence and tax reform. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, but change is long overdue in all of these areas.