Last week Mr Hammond offered a glimpse of the future for businesses post-Brexit, and he has shined some light, in the form of the budget. The budget highlighted some key areas that have an impact on businesses including:

Retail – £675 million worth of co-funding for local councils to plan the future of their high streets announced.

• Business Rates – The Chancellor also declared he will be cutting the business rates bill for the smallest of small businesses. Businesses with a rateable value of £51,000 and under will see their bill cut by a third over a two-year period. Further new mandatory business rates relief for all toilets made available to the public, whether publicly or privately owned
• Environmental – one tax announced – companies manufacturing plastic that is less than 30% recycled material will face a levy.
• For employees – Personal tax allowance will be raised to £12,500 for basic rate tax payers. Small businesses will now only have to contribute five per cent to the apprenticeship levy. Further National Living Wage increasing by 4.9%, from £7.83 to £8.21 an hour, from April 2019. Extending changes to the way self-employment status is taxed, from the public sector to medium and large private companies, from 2020.
• Digital services -The highly publicised tax will only apply to businesses that generate millions in global sales, but it remains to be seen whether this tax will have an impact on businesses that sell through sites like Amazon and Ebay. From April 2020 the new 2% digital services tax on UK revenues of big technology companies with annual revenue of at least £500 million pounds.

Feedback from the release is that there has been a lot of focus on small businesses but a lack of support for medium sized companies looking to scale up.

In terms of the property market, each sector has been performing differently:

The retail market continues to see the biggest decline with an already changing sector due to major transformations in consumer trends and technology. This however means there has been a decrease in rental costs and an increase in landlord incentive packages.

The industrial sector continues to perform well in terms of increased capital value resulting in an increase in higher rental values. The industrial sector is thriving with limited availability in prime areas. If you are looking to secure industrial space, we have been assisting companies with inventive ways to secure a property.

Finally, in the office sector, rental values increased slightly last month but still remain fairly stable. Vacancy rates have remained steady, although the use of inducement packages did increase slightly.

Businesses are currently preparing for Brexit in March 2019, which means not just focussing on preparing a business strategy, but also a property strategy. Uncertain times are testing for a business. For any advice on how you can ’Brexit – proof’ your portfolio in line with your overall business strategy please contact RED.