Research and reports

Home Business Report 2009

BT Regions is delighted to once again support Enterprise Nation in the production of the 2009 Home Business Report, the results of which were launched at the first ever Home Enterprise Day which BT hosted at BT Centre on 20 November.

Now in its third year, the Home Business Report 2009 builds on the highly successful previous reports. It offers a snapshot of the sector and a listing of the Top 100 Home Business Hotspots. This year’s report shows how home businesses are growing by ‘focusing on what they do best and outsourcing the rest’. The report also highlights that home business owners are working to increase turnover, not headcount.

Other highlights include an incredible 32% of respondents to the Home Business Survey started their business in the last 12 months, many turning redundancy into opportunity or inspired by the desire for more flexibility and control in their working lives.

And one of the factors influencing the increase in home business start-ups is enabling and affordable technology. In responses to the 2009 Home Business Survey, 81% of respondents asserted that ‘technology is critical to the success of my business’ and the majority of home business owners choose websites and blogs as their first port of call for business advice.

Technology is also playing a liberating role as survey respondents refer to the freedom and flexibility they’re enjoying from being their own boss and an improved work/life balance.

Included in the report is a call to action from Enterprise Nation to all who have responsibility for business support and development across the UK to recognise this modern form of company growth.

Using primary data sourced from the Home Business Survey issued in September 2009, plus contributions from the Business Pulse Survey 2009 Professor Colin Mason of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship  and Info UK information has been captured, analysed and is presented in the report and presented with case studies around five key themes: Growing the Business, Working 5 to 9, Trading with the world, Family Ties and Local Impact.

For further information visit the Enterprise Nation website.

Download the full Home Business Report 2009 in pdf format (1.2 MB)

The Impact of BT Across the UK

The latest version of the Social Study 2009 – 'The Economic Impact of BT across the UK’ is now available. Produced in partnership with DTZ, the study demonstrates the economic contribution of BT to the national and regional economies in terms of jobs, output and Gross Value Add (GVA) supported.

It shows that BT’s total impact across the UK amounts to £22 billion GVA which accounts for 1.8% of the UK’s total GVA. The same, proportionate, positive impact is enjoyed by the economies of Scotland, Wales and all the English Regions.

The report highlights that, in England, Wales and Scotland, for the financial year 2008-2009:

  • BT directly employs just over 86,300 people living and working in the UK and a further 5,700 contractors 
  • The total wage and salary bill of these employees is more than £3 billion 
  • BT spent a total of £9.6 billion with suppliers based in the UK in 2008/09
  • Including direct and knock-on effects, BT is estimated to support some 360,000 FTE jobs in the UK with a total value of £45 billion in BT committed more than £25 million to community, charity and voluntary programmes across the UK

This study prepared by DTZ, updates the results of a similar study undertaken by DTZ Pieda Consulting for BT in 2006. It analyses the overall UK position and each region of the UK (in terms of Regional Development Agency, RDA, boundaries), including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In addition the 2009 report also provides key statistics and impact at sub-regional level within each of these geographies.

The full report is available to download below in PDF format as well as the individual versions for each of the English Regions, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:

An Insight into Closing the Digital Divide

For BT, the causes of digital exclusion, and therefore the solution, focuses around the interconnected issues of access, motivation, skills and confidence. Over the past six years, at both a national and regional level, BT has worked with Government, NGOs, businesses and the individuals themselves, to help to address these issues. To support this work and stimulate debate BT regions has published a new report, “An Insight into Closing the Digital Divide” – April 2009 which brings together experiences and cases studies from across the UK highlighting the challenges and impacts of the digital excluded.

The report pulls together and assesses the learning from individual case studies of people who have participated in the various BT supported digital inclusion projects across the nations and regions. The report has been produced with input from internal stakeholders such as Group CR and also includes third party comment and endorsement.

Download the full report in PDF format (1mb)

Sustain IT Report 2008

The BT sponsored independent report “Making Sustainability Real – A Challenge for Regional Agencies” has been produced by the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UK CEED). The report examines the sustainable development strategies of every English region, Scotland and Wales.

It looks at good practice examples from across the regions and nations of the UK in a number of areas such as:

  • how regions are taking action on climate change,
  • what regional support there is for businesses selling goods or services that address environmental issues,
  • how small businesses are being encouraged to be more environmentally friendly,
  • what encouragement there is of the use of IT and communications technologies to reduce the demand for travel, and
  • how digital inclusion is being supported (ensuring that individuals and organisations have full access to, and the skills necessary to benefit from, ICT).

The report shows that there are good things happening across all parts of the UK but concludes that regions and nations might share these projects and initiatives better and possibly also join them up across regional boundaries.

Download the complete report (PDF - 927kb)

Innovation
BT London 2012 official partnerBT and London 2012 BT and London 2012
 

BT is the Official Communications Services Partner and a Sustainability Partner for the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games.