Covid 19 and the UK economy

I’ve been involved in Finance and Accountancy in the UK for a little over 30 years, and never in all my time have I seen a situation of the like we now are presented with.

The UK has ground to a halt and millions of people are in lockdown, sectors such as Hospitality and Travel have been very severely impacted. Of course this is not a local issue to the UK its affecting the whole world, Europe, USA and Asia. This only makes it worse, because not only is domestic demand impacted but so is the import and export business.

What I hope is that the recovery will be rapid and people will understand the importance of supporting their local businesses and Country, though if past experience is anything to go on that is probably not going to be the case.

I think that things will return to normal in that buying patterns will resume their previous trends, but a lot of good companies will just not be around anymore.

There have been very good business support iniatives from the UK Government such as the Furlough scheme which pays 80% of wages and the CBILS loan scheme. However only a small % of loans have been offered and for many companies sadly things are already too late.

You can read more about my thoughts on my blog at Report and Accounts

We’ll come through this period shortly and work will resume, but the impact will be felt for many years, through much higher levels of debt and in time a huge increase in all forms of tax, income and corporation and lower levels of spending.