News in numbers

60%

The percentage of accountants who have regretted sending emails due to tone or language used, compared with 22%  of admin workers.

Source: 4Com

14.3%

The percentage of British business trading internationally in 2017, up from 13.7% in 2016, according to the Office for National Statistics.

£24,841

The average small business is owed £24,841 on any given day, according to two million invoices analysed by Xero.

20%

Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley told a parliamentary committee he wants a 20% tax placed on online sales, in a bid to protect ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers.

Source: FT

500,000

More than 500,000 British workers living ‘below the bread line’, a figure growing faster than employment.

Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation

12yrs

Extending HM Revenue & Customs’ ability to delve into the affairs of offshore funds to 12 years is “unreasonably onerous and disproportionate to the risk”, the Economic Affairs Committee states.

£85bn

A lack of digital capability is hitting UK businesses by a cumulative £85bn a year, according to Lloyds Bank Business and Charity Index.

Struggling meat retailer Crawshaws, with 50 stores in the Midlands and northern England, is sold for £1.4m (Turn to page 30 for our  focus on north-west England)

Consumer spending grows 3.3% y-o-y in November – the lowest level of growth since March 2018,  finds Barclaycard.

0.7%

Average turnover growth for small businesses based in ‘less favoured areas’ (LFAs) in the UK, compared with 3.2% elsewhere. The Federation of Small Businesses wants the government’s new UK Shared Prosperity Fund  to focus on these LFAs.

200,000 single parents are unemployed, “the most underutilised pool of talent in the UK”, according to job site Indeed.