Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 3 April 2025

• In late March 2025, nearly a third (32%) of businesses with 10 or more employees reported they had some form of concern about their supply chains over the next 12 months; this is up 2 percentage points from late December 2024 and up 5 percentage points compared to late September 2024.
• Of the 32% of businesses with 10 or more employees that reported having at least one concern about their future supply chains, 53% reported that they expect to be impacted by the increased costs of sourcing materials, up 6 percentage points from late December 2024.
• In late March 2025, nearly three in five (58%) businesses reported that they were not concerned about the impact climate change may have on their business, broadly stable with late December 2024.
• More than one in six (18%) businesses reported that they are currently using some form of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in late March 2025, broadly stable with late December 2024, but up 8 percentage points since the question was first introduced in late September 2023; for businesses with 250 employees or more, this increased to 31%, up 13 percentage points compared to September 2023.
• When asked in late March 2025, 77% of businesses reported they were not planning to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the next three months, down 3 percentage points since late December 2024; the transportation and storage and construction industries had the largest proportion of businesses to report this, at 87% and 86% respectively.
• In late March 2025, 59% of all businesses reported they have a high or moderate level of confidence they will be able to meet their current debt obligations, while 3% had low or no confidence, both broadly stable with late December 2024; in contrast, 28% reported they currently have no debt obligations, down 3 percentage points over the same period.

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 129 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 17 to 30 March 2025.

Data reported within BICS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. Further information on quality is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI), and we regularly update confidence intervals associated with the survey questions.

Single-site weighted regional estimates up to Wave 118 are available in our Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy: November 2024 article.

The percentage of businesses that reported they were trading in late March 2025 was 95%, with 86% fully trading, and 9% partially trading (for example, trading with reduced hours or staff numbers). Meanwhile, 3% of businesses reported "temporarily paused trading", and 2% reported "permanently ceased trading" as their business's trading status.

Access to microdata

You can access the microdata for Waves 1 to 128 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) through the Secure Research Service (SRS). The BICS microdata for each wave are released on a rolling basis in the week following the publication of each wave. The microdata are made confidential and do not disclose information on any specific business.

Only researchers accredited under the Digital Economy Act, as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website are able to access data in the SRS. You can apply for accreditation through the Research Accreditation Service (RAS). You need to have relevant academic or work experience and must successfully attend and complete the assessed Safe Researcher Training.

To conduct analysis with microdata from the SRS, a project application must be submitted to the Research Accreditation Panel (RAP), as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website. To access the SRS, you must also work for an organisation with an Assured Organisational Connectivity agreement in place.

Making our published spreadsheets accessible

Following the Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidance on releasing statistics in spreadsheets, we will be amending our published tables over the next couple of publications to improve the usability, accessibility and machine readability of our published statistics. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at bics@ons.gov.uk

Reporting unit

The reporting unit is the business unit to which questionnaires are sent. The response from the reporting unit can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI, which was updated on 10 October 2024.

The BICS is voluntary, and the results are official statistics in development. More information is available in our Guide to official statistics in development.

The results are based on responses from the voluntary fortnightly BICS, which captures businesses' views on financial performance, workforce, prices, trade and business resilience. The Wave 129 survey was live for the period 17 to 30 March 2025. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 17 March to 30 March article.

Coverage

The BICS sampling frame is based on the same industries as our Monthly Business Survey (MBS). The MBS covers the UK for production industries only, and Great Britain for construction, retail and services industries. The MBS is an important input to the output measure of gross domestic product (GDP), which includes monthly GDP.

For detailed information on the industries covered by the MBS and BICS, see our GDP(o) data sources catalogue. The following are some industries that are excluded from MBS and BICS:

• agriculture
• oil and gas extraction
• energy generation and supply
• public administration and defence
• public provision of education and health
• finance and insurance

For more information on the methodology of producing the BICS, such as weighting, please see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI report.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI.