Could do better
On Tuesday I spent a very enjoyable morning talking to the The Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM), listening to their members and debating their latest annual survey.
A survey which seemed to me at the time to be very interesting and accurate. The members of the IWFM were split on their prospects, 1/3rd expecting to grow, 1/3rd to contract and 1/3rd to stay the same this year. Which is an OK if not brilliant result and seemed to me to be a fairly fair and honest reflection of the state of the UK economy more widely.
But it was only later that I realised why this could well be a survey we should be spending more time reading and reporting on. After all facility management firms run offices, factories, data centres, shopping centres, power stations, schools, universities, government and local government premises, and are at the centre of a sub-contracting empire.
They have a thumb in pretty much every pie and a finger on the pulse of the economy, they are therefore a brilliant bell-weather of the British economy. It is something that economic journalists and the Bank of England should be keeping a close eye on.
Not many business organisations have a sense of what is happening in every sector of the economy, and how government policy is effecting the economy at a grass roots level.
The IWFM’s verdict on the UK at the moment seems to be rather like that of every teacher I have ever had, CDB.
Which seems a fair and balanced analysis to me, it is not that bad but it could do better.
From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.