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<\/p>\nIf there was one message that emerged from our latest roundtable, it was this: Yorkshire businesses have stopped waiting for stability.<\/p>\n
Brexit. Covid. The energy crisis. Inflation. Wars. Interest rate rises. Political uncertainty. Tariffs. The list of economic shocks has become so familiar that many business leaders no longer see them as exceptional events. Volatility, they argued, is simply the backdrop against which modern businesses must operate. <\/p>\n
That doesn’t mean life has become any easier. Around the table sat leaders from North Yorkshire businesses across manufacturing, professional services, healthcare, interiors, engineering and technology businesses. Between them they employ thousands of people, export around the world and invest millions of pounds every year.<\/p>\n
What emerged wasn’t a story of businesses standing still. Quite the opposite. Despite unprecedented cost pressures, labour shortages and policy frustrations, these companies are investing in robotics, artificial intelligence, new machinery and international growth. They’re adapting faster than ever before, but doing so with one eye firmly on cash, because almost everyone agreed that resilience today is measured as much by the strength of your balance sheet as the strength of your order book.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that, despite the challenges, nobody around the table sounded defeated.<\/p>\n
Instead, there was a quiet determination to keep moving forward.<\/p>\n
Confidence remains fragile<\/strong><\/p>\n The roundtable, which was sponsored by Parsons Accountants, quickly centred on confidence \u2013 or rather, the lack of it. For manufacturers tied to construction, demand remains subdued despite wider signs that inflation is easing.<\/p>\n Carl Morse, managing director of Industrial Textiles and Plastics, painted a picture familiar to many businesses supplying the built environment. UK construction work for his business is down between 20 and 30 per cent, while resin-based raw materials linked to oil have risen dramatically in price.<\/p>\n \u201cI can’t absorb that level,\u201d he said. \u201cI have to pass it through \u2013 and that’s what’s stifling growth.\u201d<\/p>\n The company had been heading towards a record export year before geopolitical instability in he Middle East disrupted supply chains and customer confidence.It’s a reminder that for many Yorkshire manufacturers, local trading conditions are only part of the story. Events thousands of miles away now have an immediate impact on order books in Hull, York and Leeds.<\/p>\n That uncertainty is feeding through the entire construction supply chain. Guy Armitage, managing director of The York Handmade Brick Company, described the sector as traditionally \u2018feast or famine\u2019. Right now, he suggested, it’s firmly on the lean side.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody building anything is facing higher cost pressures \u2013 labour, materials, everything. When you’re at the high end of the market like we are, that means more pressure. But there is a market for quality. We’re well invested, we’ve got a strong workforce, and we’re set for when things pick up.\u201d<\/p>\n The same pattern is emerging in commercial interiors. Sean Watts, founder of Chameleon Business Interiors, said activity remains healthy, particularly in North America, but converting opportunities into completed projects is becoming increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cThe North American market is strong. The UK started the year well and has plateaued. There’s a lot of opportunity, but it’s slow to execute. We’ve got a great order book, but getting projects actually started on site is the challenge.”<\/p>\n With fewer projects progressing, margins have inevitably come under pressure. \u201cEveryone I speak to in our sector says margin pressure is the biggest problem. People are scrambling to get whatever business they can.\u201d<\/p>\n Resilience starts with cash<\/strong><\/p>\n If confidence is fragile, cash has become the defining measure of resilience. Repeatedly, the conversation returned to balance sheet strength rather than headline turnover.<\/p>\n Neil Crowther, founder of Ardent, believes successive crises have fundamentally changed the way owner-managers think.<\/p>\n \u201cYou’ve just got to make sure you’re not overextending, but at the same time you’ve got to grab opportunities.”<\/p>\n The lesson from the last decade, he argued, has been financial discipline. \u201cWhen times are good, you fill the bank and prepare yourself, because it’s going to get bad at some point. If you’ve not overextended or filled shareholders’ pockets too much, you’ve got a good chance of getting out the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n That philosophy resonated around the room. Watts explained that more than half of Chameleon’s projects are now financed over three to five years as customers seek to preserve cash rather than commit significant capital upfront.<\/p>\n Even investment decisions are being viewed through a different lens. Charlie Breeze, managing director at Sylatech, said businesses increasingly favour asset finance over using their own cash reserves.<\/p>\n “You can spend \u00a3300,000 of your own cash or pay \u00a36,500 a month for five years. It de-risks what you’re doing. Anything under \u00a350,000 we’ll probably fund ourselves; over that, we’ll generally asset finance it.”<\/p>\n Cash, rather than profit, has become the buffer that allows businesses to weather whatever comes next.<\/p>\n Banking has changed<\/strong><\/p>\n One unexpected area of consensus concerned Britain’s banks. While nobody suggested borrowing had become inexpensive, several participants argued the banking sector is behaving far more responsibly than during the financial crisis.<\/p>\n Parsons said the relationship between banks and SMEs has matured significantly since the financial crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cTen or fifteen years ago, we spent a lot of time keeping banks calm,\u201d he recalled. \u201cNow the conversations are more about structure and affordability \u2013 what level of leverage is sensible, how much headroom a business needs if interest rates move again. It\u2019s not cuddly, but it is more grown up.\u201d<\/p>\n He cited a recent \u00a313m funding package in South Yorkshire which his firm had recently advised on as evidence that appetite still exists for well-managed businesses.<\/p>\n Yet the criticism wasn’t about willingness to lend. It was about speed. \u201cIf you’re in a hurry, you’ll pay for it,\u201d said Breese. \u201cThe banks all move at a glacial pace. The advice must be start planning early.\u2019<\/p>\n The message was clear: finance remains available, but businesses need to think months rather than weeks ahead.<\/p>\n Skills remain the biggest structural challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n If rising costs dominate today’s headlines, skills shortages may prove the bigger long-term threat.<\/p>\n Few stories illustrated that better than York Handmade Brick Company\u2019s recent investment programme.<\/p>\n Armitage explained how a \u00a31.5m investment in a modern moulding machine exposed the growing shortage of engineering talent.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew our existing maintenance team would need support. We advertised and didn’t get applicants. In the end we recruited two young Indian engineers from Teesside University \u2013 and without them, I don’t think we could have got the machine running as it should. They’ve been crucial.\u201d<\/p>\n Subsequent visa changes mean repeating that recruitment exercise would be far harder today. \u201cIf we wanted to make a similar investment now, I’d seriously question where we’d get the skills.”<\/p>\n Sylatech faces a similar challenge. \u201cIt’s a nightmare. We’ve been constantly recruiting for 12 months and never catch up. CNC operators around Kirby Misperton? There aren’t many. The ones we can attract are travelling 35 miles each way \u2013 and when fuel hits \u00a31.80 a litre, that becomes a real issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite introducing a four-day week, healthcare benefits and improved packages, attracting skilled engineers remains difficult.<\/p>\n Carl Morse believes the issue extends beyond engineering. \u201cThere’s a demographic issue. Most of my leadership team are my age. I’m struggling to find younger people with that same hunger \u2013 not just engineers, but salespeople willing to graft and be rewarded for success.”<\/p>\n Have we priced young people out of work?<\/strong><\/p>\n The discussion then broadened beyond recruitment into wider questions around education, wages and opportunity.<\/p>\n Martin Benson-May, audit director at Parsons Accountants, argued rapid increases in the National Living Wage have produced unintended consequences.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve had the minimum wage come in and then rise quickly. It’s now very hard to pay ‘a bit more’ to compensate for inconvenience – like travel or unsociable hours. Everyone has that same base cost. And for apprentices over 21, the costs are prohibitive. You can easily be looking at \u00a327,000 a year to train someone, which means you simply hire the person who’s a couple of months younger, or you don’t hire at all.”<\/p>\n Parsons said employers are having to fill skills gaps that were once addressed much earlier in education.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re an ICAEW training firm,\u201d he explained. \u201cTraditionally, we\u2019d take school leavers and graduates and assume a certain level of numeracy and digital competence. Increasingly, we\u2019re having to go right back to basics \u2013 spreadsheets, email etiquette, even how to speak to a client on the phone. We\u2019re happy to do it, but it shows you how much pressure has shifted from the state to employers.\u201d<\/p>\n For many around the table, the problem begins long before recruitment. \u201cOur education system is flawed,\u201d Morse said. \u201cTeachers are generally academic and have only worked in academic environments. We don’t teach kids that there are alternative career paths beyond university. The curriculum hasn’t really changed in 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Watts sees those challenges first-hand through his work with a children’s charity. \u201cIn some of the poorer areas we work in, aspiration levels are rock bottom. You see six-year-olds who’ve never been outside a very small radius. They don’t have role models who get up and go to work. We run 12-week programmes from age six to 18, often at sporting venues or airports. When a kid talks to a pilot over the radio and suddenly thinks, ‘I could do that’, their world.<\/p>\n AI has moved from experiment to necessity<\/strong><\/p>\n If there was one area where optimism outweighed concern, it was AI. Rather than viewing AI as a future technology, businesses around the table described it as something already transforming day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n Crowther explained how Ardent is embedding AI across the business. \u201cWe’ve always had decent systems \u2013 full ERP for 20 years, CRM, the lot. What’s different now is how AI lets you cut whole processes out. We’re building data lakes, using tools like Claude to write software and interrogate our own systems.\u201d<\/p>\n The impact has been immediate. Our programmers are using Claude to write code. Productivity has gone up five-fold.”<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI asked for a detailed cashflow analysis. Finance said it would take a week. With AI, we had a robust report in half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n At Chameleon, AI is accelerating design rather than replacing designers. \u201cOur biggest bottleneck was the time from opportunity to getting on site \u2013 sometimes five or six weeks of design work. By integrating AI tools, our interior designers still use all their skills \u2013 you only get out what you put in \u2013 but they use AI to do much of the basic drafting. It’s chopped three weeks off the process on bigger projects.\u201d<\/p>\n Far from reducing headcount, Watts believes AI allows skilled people to spend more time adding value. \u201cAI won’t replace our designers \u2013 it frees them. It does the grunt work they don’t enjoy and lets them focus on creativity and client engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n Professional services are seeing similar changes. \u201cOur agents no longer have to summarise each call,\u201d said Tom Woolgrove, chief executive of Benenden Health. \u201cAI does it automatically. That frees them up to help customers, instead of typing.\u201d<\/p>\n Parsons believes accountancy is heading in the same direction. \u201cAI will automate most routine tasks \u2013 reconciliations, basic compliance, drafting \u2013 and shift the profession towards higher-value advisory and problem solving. The question is how we manage that transition and communicate it to staff and clients.”<\/p>\n Trust remains the missing piece<\/strong><\/p>\n The enthusiasm for AI was tempered by concerns over governance. Businesses handling sensitive data recognise that productivity gains cannot come at the expense of security.<\/p>\n \u201cData security is paramount when dealing with patient medical records,\u201d says Woolgrove. \u201cAll our data is -fenced. We lock down any use of ‘open’ AI tools, and it is something we take extremely seriously.\u2019<\/p>\n The challenge is becoming as much cultural as technological. Crowther believes leadership is critical. We’ve rolled out Copilot licences because it’s the most secure \u2013 not necessarily the best model, but the safest in a Microsoft environment. Then we’re starting with the senior leadership team, making sure they understand what these tools can do, and identifying champions in each department.<\/p>\n A message for government<\/strong><\/p>\n Towards the end of the discussion, attention inevitably turned to Westminster. The requests were remarkably consistent. Lower taxes. Greater stability. Less regulation.<\/p>\n Above all, a government prepared to work with business rather than simply regulate it.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s just deeply depressing,” said Tom. “Government has turned inwards. Rather than saying ‘here’s a healthcare strategy’ or ‘here’s a growth strategy’, it’s tinkering and rhetoric. If we’re going to get out of the UK’s challenges, we need to grow national income, not just move tax thresholds around.\u201d<\/p>\n Watts plea was equally simple. \u201cYou need to be an optimistic personality to keep driving forward. If you weren’t, you’d just retract. Reduce the burden on business and make it easier to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n Parsons added: \u201cMost of our clients are not sitting there scheming about how to avoid tax. They just want a stable, predictable framework so they can plan investment, headcount and succession. Now, the goalposts move so often that long term planning has become a bit of a dark art.\u201d<\/p>\n Armitage argued that businesses should be trusted to do what they already do well. We must look after our staff or we lose them. We must improve energy efficiency because it’s so expensive. What we don’t need are extra taxes making us even less competitive. Trust businesses to do the right thing and focus on a level playing field \u2013 especially on energy costs versus Europe and the US.”<\/p>\n Quiet resilience<\/strong><\/p>\n For all the frustrations around tax, skills, energy and regulation, perhaps the most striking feature of the discussion was what was missing.<\/p>\n Nobody was waiting to be rescued. These are businesses investing in robotics while orders are under pressure. They are adopting AI while wrestling with recruitment. They’re opening new markets, financing new machinery and planning for the next upturn while recognising the current one may still be some distance away.<\/p>\n Resilience, it became clear, isn’t simply about surviving difficult periods. It’s about making decisions that leave your business stronger when conditions improve.<\/p>\n If there was one conclusion from the discussion, it was that Yorkshire’s business community isn’t short of ideas, ambition or determination. What many believe it lacks is a policy environment that matches that ambition.<\/p>\n Until then, they’ll continue doing what they’ve become exceptionally good at over the past decade: adapting, investing and quietly getting on with the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After years of economic shocks, Yorkshire businesses have stopped waiting for certainty. Instead, they’re investing, adapting and embracing new technology while keeping one eye firmly on cash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271992,"featured_media":2156874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137137,53262],"coauthors":[137100],"class_list":["post-2156873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-business-news","tag-featured-story","tag-yorkshire"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/apr_26\/Ian-Parsons-Managing-Partner-and-Head-of-Corporate-Finance--199x300.png\")
Ian Parsons, founder of Parsons Accountants, believes lenders have learned valuable lessons. \u201cThis time around, banks have got more money and more resilience. They’re not trying to call things in. They’ve still got appetite \u2013 especially for steady, recurring-income businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n