R3 comments on Comprehensive Spending Review

Stephen said:

“30% of small businesses say they are "very reliant" or "fairly reliant" on public sector contracts and 10% of all small businesses say they would become insolvent if they no longer had supply contracts to the public sector. We calculate that 148,000 small businesses are at risk of failure, but of course not all businesses will lose all of their public sector work.

"The effect on the current levels of corporate insolvency is likely to be pronounced in any case - given that business failures ran to 26,000 for the whole of 2009."

Law continued:

"Our members predict that 2011 will be a difficult year for small businesses and factors such as loss of public sector work will see company insolvency numbers start to rise, potentially making 2010 the year of the calm before the storm.

"Although numbers have decreased over the course of this year, insolvency practitioners are expecting 27,540 corporate insolvencies in 2011. The same survey found that almost half (45%) of the UK’s practitioners expecting corporate insolvencies to peak in 2011. Businesses with a diversified customer base will clearly be better able to weather the storm.”