BLOG

Reports from The Bank of England have revealed that lending to small to medium-sized businesses fell by record levels in January 2010. So in an industry that heavily relies on SMES, will this drop in lending affect the number of new tenants entering serviced offices throughout the UK after a period which had shown such promise?

It is with growing frustration that leading to SMES, heralding by all the principle political figures as the future of the UK economy, continues to fall despite the massive government bail-outs and apparent constant push to free this cash up.

Could it be that the proposals received by the banks aren’t good enough? Or could it be protectionism by the banks as they seemingly fall back into the old routine of massive bonuses while caring little for the smaller businesses government assistance was designed to partially help?

After a year where the size of businesses entering serviced offices fell and the pockets of those operating these business communities were hit hard, what will this record drop in lending bring to the serviced office market in 2010? Only time will really tell if this is the return of the headache for serviced office providers here in the UK. It will be interesting to see these results in our upcoming Q1 Serviced Office Review series. If you would like to assess the impact for yourself, the reports should be available in the latter half of April.

Published by Simon on Friday, 19 March 2010 at 9:20 AM