Business

London managed to build just 7 per cent of the new homes it required last year, a fresh signal that Sir Keir Starmer’s flagship pledge to deliver 1.5 million homes across England by the end of the parliament is in serious trouble.

According to a new report from property consultancy JLL, the capital delivered only 6,325 homes in the twelve months to March 2026, against an annual need of 88,000 — leaving a yawning gap that property professionals warn cannot be closed without urgent policy intervention. JLL’s London housing challenge analysis puts private-sector starts down a remarkable 84 per cent since 2015.

The reasons are familiar to anyone who has tracked the capital’s residential market over the past three years: stretched buyers, departing landlords, ballooning service charges and a planning system that continues to throttle delivery.

Buyers boxed in by rates and the loss of Help to Buy

Higher-for-longer interest rates remain the single biggest drag on demand. Mortgage affordability has tightened sharply, and renters trying to scrape together a deposit are losing ground to rising rents.

The squeeze is particularly acute on new-build stock. JLL’s figures show prospective buyers are now paying a 26 per cent premium per square foot for a London new build compared with an equivalent second-hand property, a gap that, in the absence of Help to Buy (which closed to new applicants in 2023), first-time buyers are simply struggling to bridge.

The picture is consistent with the wider national slowdown Business Matters has reported on previously, with house-building output in 2024 down by a fifth on the previous year.

Landlords and overseas buyers head for the exit

The investor market, historically the bedrock of off-plan sales in zones one and two — has effectively collapsed. Tax increases on buy-to-let landlords and the sweeping changes ushered in this month under the Renters’ Rights Act have driven a wave of disposals.

Just 4 per cent of landlords told JLL they were even considering adding to their portfolios. As we explored in our recent feature on how the Renters’ Rights Act is rewriting the business case for buy-to-let, the abolition of Section 21, the move to rolling periodic tenancies and tougher compliance burdens have fundamentally altered the economics of residential letting.

Overseas investors, traditionally heavy buyers of central London new builds, have also retreated: numbers in prime central postcodes are down 53 per cent on 2015.

The knock-on effect on developer cash flow is severe. A decade ago, more than half of all new homes in the capital were sold off-plan, the crucial pre-sales that unlock development finance and underwrite future schemes. In 2025 that figure was just 11 per cent. Housebuilders are now sitting on more than 22,000 unsold London homes, including 3,600 completed units lying empty and a further 18,737 still under construction.

The cost crunch hitting the supply side

The demand-side problems are being compounded by an equally acute squeeze on supply. The Home Builders Federation’s latest “Viability Crunch” report found that the cost of building a single home has risen by £76,000 since 2020, equivalent to roughly a fifth of the average UK house price.

Around 40 per cent of that increase, the HBF says, stems from new taxes and regulation, including the forthcoming Building Safety Levy, Future Homes Standard and Biodiversity Net Gain requirements. The remainder reflects material and labour inflation, much of it linked to post-pandemic supply chain disruption and the long shadow of the Grenfell tragedy on safety compliance.

Workforce constraints are also tightening their grip, with the construction skills shortage already threatening the 1.5 million homes target Business Matters has reported on at length.

The service-charge sting

A less-publicised but increasingly punitive factor is the relentless rise in service charges, which lenders now bake into affordability calculations.

JLL’s analysis found that average service charges for blocks with basic amenities, lifts, cleaning, communal lighting, have climbed 43 per cent since 2020. For developments boasting concierge services, pools and gyms, charges have leapt by 89 per cent. For first-time buyers attempting to stretch to a £400,000 flat in Battersea or Wembley, a £5,000-a-year service charge can be the difference between a yes and a no from the mortgage desk.

Marcus Dixon, head of UK living and residential research at JLL, was unsparing in his verdict, arguing the current policy mix is actively choking off delivery. He has called for the abolition of stamp duty on primary residences as a starting point.

“Without policy change on buying costs, we’ve simply made new homes unaffordable for buyers, a situation that will need to change if we are serious about increasing housing delivery,” he said.

JLL points out that UK property taxes account for 3.7 per cent of GDP, the highest share of any advanced economy, a level of fiscal drag that, at the margin, makes the difference between a viable scheme and a stalled one.

The implications stretch well beyond Whitehall’s targets. House-building is a critical driver of SME activity, from local subcontractors to building products suppliers and small-scale developers. A capital delivering only 7 per cent of its housing need is a capital starving thousands of small businesses of revenue, while at the same time pricing the workers those businesses rely on out of the city.

If Labour wants to keep its 1.5 million homes pledge credible, ministers will need to address the cost-of-buying problem and the cost-of-building problem in tandem. London’s figures suggest the clock is already running out.

Read more:
London housing slump leaves Labour’s 1.5 million homes pledge looking out of reach

Asda has turned to Ocado Group in an attempt to rescue an online grocery operation that has lagged the competition for the best part of a decade, signing a long-term deal that will see the Hatfield-based technology firm rebuild the supermarket’s digital shop window, in-store picking and last-mile delivery network.

Under the agreement, announced this week, Asda will deploy Ocado’s Smart Platform, the same end-to-end fulfilment stack used by more than 1,000 grocery stores in 11 countries, across its consumer-facing website and app, its in-store order assembly, and the planning systems that route vans to roughly 1,100 UK stores. The roll-out is scheduled to begin in 2027 with a refreshed online shopping experience, before progressing to picking and delivery improvements.

The tie-up is the boldest move yet by executive chairman Allan Leighton, who returned to the Leeds-based grocer in late 2024 after a quarter of a century away, and is being positioned as a central plank of his turnaround plan. Leighton, who built his reputation in British retail during Asda’s Walmart-era heyday, has spent the past 18 months pumping money into price, availability and store standards while attempting to halt years of market-share slippage.

“We know that continued success in this highly competitive market is dependent on providing a positive experience for customers every time they shop,” Leighton said. “Partnering with Ocado will strengthen our online offer and provide a consistent and high-quality experience for millions of shoppers, from order through to delivery, while supporting our formula for growth.”

The decision reflects a hard commercial reality. According to Kantar Worldpanel, Asda’s share of the British grocery market has drifted below 14 per cent, leaving it firmly third behind Tesco and Sainsbury’s and within touching distance of Aldi. Online, where Tesco and Sainsbury’s have long dominated and Ocado Retail has set the benchmark for service, the gap has been even more pronounced. Industry analysts have repeatedly cited a clunky digital experience, limited delivery slots and inconsistent in-store picking as drags on Asda’s growth.

Why Ocado, and why now

For Ocado, the deal is a much-needed vote of confidence in a Solutions division that has had a turbulent few years, with US partner Kroger scaling back its commitments to robotic warehouses. Adding a top-five British grocer to the client roster is significant, not least because it suggests the company’s lower-cost in-store fulfilment software, rather than the capital-intensive automated warehouses that made its name, is becoming the commercial workhorse.

Tim Steiner, Ocado Group’s chief executive, said the UK remained “one of the world’s most competitive and fast-evolving online grocery markets, where technology, scale and continuous innovation are increasingly important for retailers looking to maintain leadership positions”. He added that the platform now processes more than 70 million orders annually worldwide.

For Asda, the rationale is equally clear. Building a modern e-commerce stack in-house would have taken years and tied up scarce capital at a moment when the business is already grappling with substantial debt inherited from the 2021 Issa brothers and TDR Capital buyout. Buying capability off the shelf from a proven specialist allows the supermarket to focus management attention on the basics, price, range and store experience, while pushing its online proposition forward in parallel. As Ocado has repeatedly argued, the structural shift to online grocery shopping since the pandemic has not unwound, and the cost of falling behind is rising.

What customers should expect

In practical terms, shoppers should notice a slicker website and app from 2027, with improved search, more relevant product recommendations and a simpler checkout. Behind the scenes, Ocado’s in-store fulfilment software is designed to help pickers work faster and more accurately, while route-planning tools should squeeze more deliveries out of each van, translating, Asda hopes, into more available slots, fewer substitutions and better on-time performance.

Asda has confirmed it will retain full control of pricing, range and the wider customer proposition. The partnership is technology-led rather than a wholesale outsourcing arrangement, closer in spirit to a software licence than to the deep Ocado Retail joint venture model the group operates with Marks & Spencer.

The move also dovetails with Asda’s longer-running pivot towards online shopping, which has already prompted significant operational changes inside the business and put pressure on parts of its store estate. Leighton’s bet is that a credible online proposition, married to renewed price competitiveness in-store, is the only viable route back to growth for a chain that built its reputation on value but has, by its own admission, drifted in recent years.

Whether Ocado’s technology can deliver that turnaround is a different question. Implementations of this scale rarely run to schedule, and the 2027 start date gives rivals plenty of time to widen their lead. But after years of incremental fixes, Leighton has finally placed a strategic bet — and tied Asda’s online future to one of the few British technology firms that genuinely operates at supermarket scale.

Read more:
Asda turns to Ocado in bid to fix its online grocery problem

Burberry has quietly knocked a decade off the urgency of its climate plan, becoming the latest FTSE 100 heavyweight to soften the green pledges that defined corporate Britain at the start of the decade.

In its 2025-26 annual report, the trench coat maker confirmed it now expects to hit net zero emissions “no later than” the 2049-50 financial year, a full ten years later than the 2039-40 deadline it set with great fanfare in 2021. Back then, the Riccardo Tisci-era management team promised to go further still, declaring Burberry would be “climate positive” by 2040 and insisting it was “helping protect our planet for generations to come”.

Four years on, the language is markedly more sober. The Macclesfield-based group described the rewritten target as a “pragmatic response to external factors”, while arguing the new timetable still reflected its view of climate change as “a principal risk” to the business. Translation: the City wants margin recovery, the supply chain is not decarbonising as quickly as anyone hoped, and Washington has stopped pretending to care.

From outlier to the herd

Burberry is hardly alone. Unilever, owner of Dove and Marmite, used its 2024 strategic reset to dilute a string of ethical commitments, including the pace at which it weans itself off virgin plastic. Nestlé walked away from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance last year, taking the air out of one of the food sector’s more ambitious decarbonisation coalitions. And the two London-listed oil majors, BP and Shell, have spent the past eighteen months unpicking renewable energy targets in favour of a frank return to barrels and cubic feet.

The political weather, of course, has shifted with them. President Trump’s return to the White House has emboldened US-listed peers to pare back ESG disclosures, and stock market investors – tired of paying a “virtue premium” on shares that have lagged the index – are pushing UK boards in the same direction. As I argued recently in my column on why UK businesses must not retreat from net zero in 2026, the danger is that short-term capitulation in the boardroom papers over a hard cost when capital markets, customers and regulators inevitably swing back.

What burberry actually said

In the small print, Burberry insists the revised goal takes account of the “observed and projected speed and scale of decarbonisation” across the luxury industry and in the economies in which it operates. The group also reiterated a near-term commitment to deliver “significant emissions reductions” by 2030, a deadline that still falls within the current chief executive’s likely tenure and remains broadly consistent with the Science Based Targets initiative’s 1.5°C pathway.

For sustainability professionals, that 2030 milestone is the one to watch. A 2050 long-stop date is now table stakes; the credibility test is what happens in the next 1,825 days.

The schulman turnaround – and the £12.2m question

The climate rewrite lands in the middle of a delicate turnaround under Joshua Schulman, who became chief executive in 2024 and has used aggressive marketing, sharper price architecture and an unapologetic return to the brand’s British heritage to steady the ship. Shares are up roughly 17 per cent over the past twelve months, although they remain a long way below the peaks of 2023.

Schulman’s reward for the recovery, also disclosed in the annual report, is a new long-term incentive plan that could lift his total package to as much as £12.2 million in future years, subject to share price and performance hurdles. Coming in the same document as a softer climate pledge, the optics are uncomfortable – particularly for investors who recall that Burberry recently warned it would cut 1,700 jobs in a global savings drive amid the wider luxury slowdown.

The SME angle

There is a longer-tail story here for the small and mid-sized firms that make up Burberry’s supplier base, and the wider FTSE 100 ecosystem. When a flagship brand stretches its decarbonisation runway, the Scope 3 pressure on tier-two and tier-three suppliers eases – at least on paper. In practice, the regulatory ratchet is moving in the opposite direction, with the new UK Sustainability Reporting Standards bedding in from this financial year. As we have flagged previously, SMEs face a widening net zero divide as 2026 reporting rules loom, and the businesses that mistake a softer corporate mood music for permission to pause investment may find themselves locked out of supply chains within two reporting cycles.

For now, Burberry’s message to the City is straightforward: ambition, yes, but on terms the market – and the share price – can live with. Whether that proves to be pragmatism or short-sightedness will be judged not in 2050, but well before the next general election.

Read more:
Burberry pushes net zero target back a decade as luxury sector cools on climate pledges

Millions of women suffering the long shadow of endometriosis or complications from childbirth stand to gain from a sweeping new science and technology partnership between Britain and France, unveiled today as Technology Secretary Liz Kendall touched down in Paris for G7 talks.

The agreement, light on diplomatic gloss and heavy on practical intent, places artificial intelligence and shared clinical data at the heart of a joint push into two areas that have long been the Cinderellas of medical research: women’s health and infectious disease. For an SME-rich life sciences sector on both sides of the Channel, it also reopens a more reliable pipeline of cross-border funding, talent and commercial opportunity at a moment when post-Brexit research ties have been quietly knitting back together.

A long-overdue focus on women’s health

Officials say the partnership will accelerate work on conditions that have been systematically under-researched and under-diagnosed, with patients on both sides of the Channel waiting years for answers. By pooling datasets and clinical expertise, British and French researchers expect to deliver earlier diagnoses, safer pregnancies and more personalised care. As the Women’s Organisation has previously warned in Business Matters, more than a third of women feel unsupported on issues such as endometriosis, fertility and menopause, with measurable knock-on effects on productivity, promotion and pay across the SME workforce.

Kendall, who took on the science and technology brief last September, said the deal would “tackle some of the biggest challenges in women’s health, deliver safer and healthier pregnancies, and accelerate the fight against infectious diseases worldwide”. She added that the spirit of cross-Channel co-operation would carry into wider G7 discussions on AI adoption and online child safety.

Superbugs and supercomputers

The agreement also turns the firepower of cutting-edge imaging and AI on infectious diseases, with researchers set to share global data on drug-resistant E. coli, tuberculosis, malaria and emerging viruses. The intention is blunt: faster detection of microbes that shrug off existing treatments, quicker identification of outbreaks, and a sharper clinical edge for the doctors on the front line.

Underpinning the science is a meaningful injection of cash for compute. Nearly £900,000 of UK government funding will deepen ties between the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, home to the Isambard-AI machine, and France’s national high-performance computing centre, GENCI. Isambard-AI is already crunching workloads from drug discovery to climate modelling, and as Business Matters has reported, Britain’s broader AI compute ambitions are moving fast, with the Stargate UK project set to scale capacity many times over by next year.

A further £300,000 from the UK Treasury, matched by €330,000 from Paris, will fund early-career researcher exchanges via UKRI’s International Science Partnerships Fund, helping junior scientists work in both countries and unlocking joint bids into Horizon Europe.

A more strategic UK–EU axis

Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister for higher education, research and space, framed the agreement as “a decisive step” in the two nations’ scientific partnership, anchored in trust and aimed at “tangible results in artificial intelligence, health, and beyond”. Read alongside the recent UK–EU partnership announced to boost AI adoption and economic growth, it suggests a more strategic, less transactional approach to European research and innovation than has been evident for some years.

For British SMEs in life sciences, diagnostics, femtech and AI tooling, the practical implications are worth watching. A simpler route to joint French projects, cleaner access to Horizon Europe and a fully wired-up supercomputing pipeline lowers the cost of cross-border collaboration and, crucially, the cost of getting product to clinical trial. The UK government’s continued push for closer industrial and research ties with Europe is broadly consistent with the record £55bn long-term R&D commitment Kendall set out earlier this year, a signal that ministers see science partnerships not as nice-to-have diplomacy but as core economic infrastructure.

A separate prize for Imperial

In a parallel piece of choreography, Imperial College London and France’s National Centre for Scientific Research will today sign a separate landmark agreement on metabolism research, targeting heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. According to the UK Science and Innovation Network’s France country snapshot, health and emerging technologies are now the two anchor pillars of UK–France scientific co-operation.

The headline numbers, taken alone, are modest by Whitehall standards. The strategic message is not. Britain and France are quietly rebuilding the rails for the kind of cross-Channel science the rest of Europe will find increasingly difficult to ignore, and for the SMEs that ride on them, the rails are getting straighter.

Read more:
Britain and France strike landmark AI pact to transform women’s health and tackle drug-resistant superbugs

If you run a business that deals with physical products, inventory management can quickly become stressful. You may struggle with stock shortages, excess inventory, delayed deliveries, or inaccurate records. Handling everything manually, whether in spreadsheets or on paper, often increases the risk of errors and confusion.

This is where accounting software becomes useful. Modern accounting software does much more than track income and expenses. It also helps you manage inventory efficiently, improve stock visibility and make better business decisions.

Benefits of Accounting Software for Inventory Management

Here are 10 practical ways accounting software helps with inventory management.

1. Tracks Inventory in Real Time

One of the biggest advantages of accounting software is real-time inventory tracking. Whenever you make a sale, purchase new stock or return items, the inventory records update automatically.

This helps you know exactly how much stock is available at any moment. You do not need to update spreadsheets or check physical records repeatedly manually. Real-time tracking also reduces the risk of overselling products that are already out of stock.

2. Reduces Human Errors

Manual inventory management often leads to mistakes such as duplicate entries, incorrect stock counts or missing transactions. Even small errors can affect your profits and customer satisfaction.

Accounting software automates calculations and stock updates, which lowers the chances of human error. This helps you maintain accurate inventory records and avoid confusion during audits or stock checks.

3. Helps Prevent Overstocking

Keeping too much stock increases storage costs, while insufficient stock can lead to missed sales opportunities. Accounting software helps you maintain the right inventory levels by showing stock movement patterns and reorder alerts.

You can identify fast-moving and slow-moving products more easily. This allows you to reorder products at the right time and avoid unnecessary inventory pile-ups.

4. Improves Purchase Management

Good inventory management also depends on efficient purchasing. Accounting software helps you monitor supplier orders, purchase bills and incoming stock in one place.

You can track pending purchase orders, compare supplier costs and review past purchasing trends. This makes it easier to plan purchases according to your business demand and budget.

5. Simplifies Batch and Expiry Tracking

If your business deals with products such as medicines, food items or cosmetics, tracking expiry dates is extremely important. Many accounting software solutions support batch-wise inventory management.

This feature helps you track manufacturing dates, expiry dates and product batches accurately. You can identify products nearing expiry and take timely action to reduce losses.

6. Generates Useful Inventory Reports

Inventory reports help you understand how your stock is performing. Accounting software can automatically generate reports such as stock summary reports, item-wise sales reports and low stock reports.

These reports give you valuable insights into product demand, inventory turnover and purchasing patterns. With better information, you can make smarter business decisions and improve profitability.

7. Supports Multi-Location Inventory Management

If you operate from multiple warehouses, stores or branches, managing inventory manually becomes more complicated. Accounting software allows you to monitor stock across different locations from a single system.

You can check stock availability at each branch, transfer inventory between locations and maintain centralised control. This improves coordination and prevents stock mismatches.

8. Integrates Sales and Inventory Data

Inventory management becomes much easier when your sales and accounting systems work together. Accounting software automatically links sales transactions with inventory updates.

Whenever a customer buys a product, the stock quantity reduces instantly and the sales entry gets recorded simultaneously. This saves time and ensures that your financial records and inventory records stay consistent.

9. Makes Physical Stock Verification Easier

Regular stock verification is necessary to identify damaged goods, missing stock or inventory mismatches. Accounting software simplifies this process by maintaining organised inventory records.

You can compare physical stock with system records more efficiently and quickly identify discrepancies. This helps improve inventory accuracy and strengthens internal controls within your business.

10. Helps You Save Time and Costs

Managing inventory manually takes a significant amount of time and effort. Accounting software automates many routine tasks such as stock updates, invoice creation, reorder reminders and report generation.

This improves operational efficiency and allows you to focus more on business growth. Better inventory control also reduces unnecessary expenses related to storage, wastage and emergency purchases.

Final Thoughts

Inventory management directly affects your business operations, customer satisfaction and profitability. Relying on manual processes may work for a small business initially, but it often becomes difficult as your business grows.

Accounting software helps you organise inventory, reduce errors, track stock movement and make informed decisions with greater confidence. Whether you run a retail shop, wholesale business or manufacturing unit, the right software can make inventory management simpler, faster and more accurate.

Read more:
How Accounting Software Helps with Inventory Management

In parts of Florida, the weather is not just background noise. It shapes how people live, build, and plan for the future. For Stephen Cheatham, that reality started early—and it never left.

Today, he is known for helping property owners and developers think more carefully about risk. Not in theory, but in real-world decisions that can make or break a project. His path to that role did not come from chasing attention. It came from watching, learning, and asking better questions over time.

“I’ve always been more interested in how things hold up than how they look,” Cheatham says.

Early Life in Northern Florida

Stephen Cheatham grew up in northern Florida. His childhood was simple and hands-on. He spent time outdoors, surrounded by open land and water.

He was the kind of kid who took things apart just to see how they worked. Small engines. Tools. Anything he could get his hands on.

“I learned more by doing than by being told,” he says.

Weather also played a role. While northern Florida does not take the full force of every storm, it feels enough to notice patterns. Cheatham paid attention.

He watched how heavy rain changed the land. He noticed how some structures held strong while others did not.

That curiosity stuck.

Why Structural Engineering and Coastal Risk Matter

That early interest led him to study engineering. He focused on structural systems and environmental factors. Not just how to build—but how to build to last.

“It’s not just about putting something up. It’s about asking what it will face over time,” he says.

After graduation, Cheatham worked with firms involved in coastal development across Florida. These were large projects. They involved many moving parts—developers, contractors, planners.

The work gave him a clear view of the industry.

It also raised concerns.

“I started to see how often long-term risks were treated as short-term problems,” he explains.

In fast-growing areas, speed and cost often take priority. But in storm-prone regions, that approach can create bigger issues later.

Lessons From Coastal Development Projects

In his early career, Cheatham was in the middle of major projects. He saw how decisions were made. He also saw what got overlooked.

“There’s always pressure to move fast,” he says. “But the environment doesn’t care about deadlines.”

He began to focus more on durability and resilience. Not as buzzwords, but as practical concerns.

For example, how a building handles repeated exposure to moisture. Or how wind loads change over time. Or how small design choices affect long-term maintenance.

These details matter more than most people realize.

“Most failures are not surprises,” Cheatham says. “They’re the result of things people chose to ignore.”

That mindset started to shape his next move.

Transition to Independent Consulting

Over time, Cheatham stepped away from large firm work. He moved into independent consulting.

The shift was intentional.

“I wanted to spend more time helping people think before they build,” he says.

Instead of working on high-volume projects, he focused on fewer clients. Property owners. Investors. Small developers.

His role is not to design or sell. It is to guide.

He helps clients understand risk. He helps them ask better questions. He helps them avoid mistakes that are expensive to fix later.

“A lot of what I do is slow things down just enough for people to see what they might miss,” he explains.

How Stephen Cheatham Approaches Risk and Resilience

Cheatham’s approach is simple on the surface. But it is built on years of observation.

He studies patterns. Weather. Materials. Land conditions.

He believes preparation is more valuable than reaction.

“By the time something fails, the real decision was made a long time ago,” he says.

He is also known for being direct. Clients value that.

“I’m not there to agree with everything. I’m there to point out what could go wrong,” he explains.

That honesty builds trust over time.

Instead of selling solutions, he focuses on clarity. What are the risks? What are the trade-offs? What can be improved now instead of later?

Daily Routine and Personal Life

Outside of work, Cheatham keeps a steady routine.

He wakes up early. Mornings often start with reviewing weather patterns and local conditions.

“It’s a habit at this point,” he says. “I like to know what’s coming.”

He spends much of his free time near the water. Boating. Fishing. Exploring quieter parts of the Gulf.

He also enjoys working with his hands. Restoring small watercraft. Improving his living space.

These activities reflect the same mindset he brings to work—pay attention, stay patient, and focus on what lasts.

A Quiet Leader in a Complex Industry

Stephen Cheatham does not chase visibility. He keeps a low public profile. But within his circle, his reputation is strong.

He is known for being calm. Thoughtful. Reliable.

He listens more than he speaks.

“I don’t think you learn much when you’re always talking,” he says.

In an industry that often rewards speed, his approach stands out. He focuses on consistency. On getting the fundamentals right.

His career is still evolving. But the direction is clear.

Not bigger. Not louder.

Just better decisions, made early.

And fewer problems later.

Read more:
Stephen Cheatham Builds for What Others Overlook 

For years, the default move for a small business needing to take card payments was simple: go to your bank and rent a terminal. It seemed logical at the time.

Your bank already handled your business account, so why go elsewhere? The problem is that for a lot of SME owners, that decision has quietly cost them more than they ever expected.

Complaints about bank-issued card machines have been building up for a while. Slow settlements, locked-in contracts, clunky hardware and support teams that treat you like a ticket number. Carry on reading to find out what’s driving small businesses to make the switch and what they’re moving to instead.

What’s Wrong With Your Bank’s Terminal

The hardware issue alone is enough to put people off. Most bank-issued terminals are running on ageing technology, with slow boot times, limited connectivity options and interfaces that haven’t changed meaningfully in years. For a busy café or independent retailer, a terminal that takes 30 seconds to process a payment is frustrating, it also holds up the queue, and affects the customer experience.

Then there’s settlement speed. Some providers still operate on a T+3 basis as standard, with deferred settlement arrangements pushing that even further for certain merchants. That means money from card transactions may not reach your account for several business days, even though faster settlement is now available across much of the market.

For a small business managing tight cash flow, that kind of lag can cause real problems. It’s not unusual for an SME to take a significant Friday evening in sales and still be waiting for that money on Wednesday.

Contracts That Favour the Provider, Not the Business

One of the biggest frustrations among business owners is the contract structure. Bank payment solutions have often come with fixed-term agreements of up to 18 months, and early termination fees and auto-renewal clauses can still make switching feel difficult once you’re locked in.

Some business owners have reported paying monthly rental fees for terminals they barely use during quieter periods, with no flexibility to pause or reduce costs. When business is seasonal, a market trader in winter, for instance, or a pop-up that only operates at events, paying a flat monthly fee for hardware that’s sitting in a drawer makes very little sense.

A New Generation of Payment Terminals

The fintech sector has stepped into the gap left by legacy providers, and the options available to UK businesses have expanded considerably in recent years. These providers tend to offer faster settlement, transparent transaction fees, no monthly hardware rental costs, and much more intuitive devices.

Zeller is a fintech platform used by over 100,000 businesses internationally, offering UK merchants a modern approach to payments infrastructure.Their terminal range connects via Wi-Fi, 4G or Ethernet, supports split billing and custom VAT rates, and comes without lock-in contracts or subscription fees.

It also pairs with a business account and expense cards in a single setup, which reduces the need for multiple financial tools, the kind of integrated approach that appeals to businesses that have previously had to stitch together a payment provider, a current account and a separate expense management tool.

What to Look for When Switching

If you’re thinking about moving away from your bank’s terminal, a few things are worth checking before you commit to a new provider:

Settlement speed: Does the provider offer next-day or same-day payouts?
Contract terms:  Are there lock-in periods or early exit fees?
Transaction fees: Do you understand them at first glance? Or do you need to dig through fine print to find them?
Hardware costs: Is the terminal purchased outright, or rented monthly?
Support availability: Can you reach a real person quickly if something goes wrong?

Support: Where Legacy Providers Often Fall Short

Ask any small business owner what frustrates them most about their current payment provider, and support quality will come up more often than you’d expect. Legacy bank providers typically route queries through large call centres, and getting through to someone with the authority to actually resolve an issue can take hours. For a business mid-service, that’s not good enough.

Newer providers tend to invest more heavily in customer support, partly because their model depends on retention instead of locking people in through contracts. When your customers can leave more easily, you have a stronger incentive to make sure they don’t want to.

Concluding Remarks

The bank card machine made sense in a market where there weren’t many alternatives. That’s no longer the case. The combination of outdated hardware, slow settlement, inflexible contracts and poor support has pushed a growing number of SMEs to look elsewhere, and the fintech sector has responded with products built specifically around how small businesses actually operate.

If you’re still renting a terminal from your bank on a rolling contract, it’s worth doing a proper cost comparison. In many cases, switching to a newer provider will save money, speed up access to your funds and give you a better experience when things go wrong.

Read more:
Why Small Businesses Are Now Ditching Their Bank’s Card Machine

Hopes of a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz fade as Washington’s latest strikes leave UK SMEs counting the cost of another fuel and energy spike

The oil price has lurched higher again after the United States launched a fresh round of air strikes on Iranian missile sites and vessels Washington claims were laying mines in the Gulf, pushing the already-fragile peace process to the brink and dashing hopes of a near-term reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, was changing hands 3 per cent higher at around $99.16 a barrel by mid-morning in London, although that still leaves it below Friday’s close of just over $103. The bounce reverses a sharp Monday sell-off that had taken Brent to $97.76, its lowest level in more than a fortnight, as traders piled into the view that a US-Iran rapprochement was finally within touching distance.

Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command, insisted the latest action was narrow in scope. The strikes, he said on Monday, were designed to “defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire”. For the energy market, however, restraint is in the eye of the beholder. Iran’s negotiating team had only just touched down in Doha to thrash out an extension of the April ceasefire and a phased reopening of Hormuz when the Tomahawks flew.

A fortnight’s progress unwound in a single shift

For Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses, the timing could scarcely be worse. As Business Matters reported earlier this week, the ceasefire framework agreed in April had been quietly nudging Brent back towards double figures and easing pressure on forecourt prices for the first time since February.

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, was at pains on Tuesday to insist that a deal remained on the table. “The president’s expressed his desire to make it,” he told reporters, before adding the now-familiar caveat: “He’s either going to make a good deal or no deal.” President Trump himself has described the negotiations as “proceeding nicely”, while threatening that the outcome will be “a Great Deal for all or no Deal at all”. Tehran has been marginally more emollient, with officials confirming that the two sides had “reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion”, even if a final agreement is not yet imminent.

The market reaction in Asia and Europe tells its own story. The Nikkei 225, which had rallied 2.9 per cent on Monday to a record close of 65,158.19 on hopes of a settlement, slipped 0.3 per cent on Tuesday. China’s SSE Composite shed 0.6 per cent. In London the FTSE 100 opened 0.7 per cent firmer — a quirk of timing, given the UK and US exchanges were shut for the bank holiday on Monday and are now playing catch-up with the relief rally that lifted Germany’s Dax 2 per cent and France’s Cac 40 by 1.8 per cent.

Why Hormuz still matters to a corner shop in Croydon

The Strait of Hormuz remains, in the parlance of commodities desks, the single most important pinch-point on the planet. Roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the 21-mile-wide channel between Iran and Oman, and it has been effectively closed since late February. The International Energy Agency has described the resulting dislocation as the largest supply shock in the history of the global oil market, with cumulative Gulf supply losses now running well into ten figures of barrels.

That matters far beyond the trading floors of Geneva and Singapore. For the owner-managed engineering firm in the West Midlands, the family-run logistics operator in Felixstowe or the independent bakery in Glasgow, every dollar on a barrel of Brent feeds through to diesel, gas standing charges, packaging, and the cost of almost every shipped input. The Federation of Small Businesses has already warned that energy bills, business rates and rising employment costs are colliding to form what one chief executive described to me as a “slow-motion margin squeeze”.

The fear in Westminster is that yesterday’s modest progress on inflation is about to be reversed. Brent has risen more than 40 per cent since the start of the year, and a sustained move back above $100 would, on the Bank of England’s own modelling, push consumer prices inflation back above 4 per cent, making any further cut in Bank Rate this autumn distinctly unlikely. As Business Matters set out in its analysis of the SME impact, the cumulative drag on UK GDP from a prolonged Hormuz closure could reach £35 billion over two years.

Months, not weeks

The analyst community is, on balance, sceptical that even a comprehensive deal would deliver immediate relief. David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, argues that although oil prices could fall back “sharply” on a credible settlement, a return to anything resembling normality is a 2027 story rather than a 2026 one.

“Oil prices would only trend lower when oil market fundamentals materially improve, which looks destined to stretch into 2027,” he said, pointing to the lingering damage at Middle Eastern production facilities and a tanker fleet that is, in physical terms, in the wrong place. “At best, it could take weeks for ships to reposition themselves. At worst, a lack of shipping could be a constraining factor for months and delay production timetables.”

June Goh, an oil analyst at Sparta Commodities, struck a similar note. “The underlying supply shortfall of 10 to 11 million barrels per day of crude oil does not go away immediately and will see markets still drawing inventories until Middle Eastern crude production is back online, which is months away,” she said.

There is also the rather awkward political subtext. Any agreement between Washington and Tehran in Doha would, by design, push the thornier question of Iran’s nuclear programme into a second phase of negotiations. According to reporting by CNBC, American officials are openly worried that Iran will use the breathing space won by an initial ceasefire to drag its feet on the nuclear file, a concern that is emboldening the more hawkish wing of Congress to demand bigger up-front concessions before any further sanctions relief.

What it means for British business

For SME owners trying to plan budgets for the second half of the year, the message from this week’s whipsaw is uncomfortable but clear. The direction of travel on oil remains down, but the journey is going to be jerky, sentiment-driven and acutely sensitive to every press release out of Doha and every drone sortie in the Gulf.

That argues for caution rather than complacency. Recent Business Matters reporting on SME cost pressures suggests that the firms emerging from this period in the strongest shape are those locking in fixed-price energy contracts where they can, stress-testing cash flow against a $110 scenario, and resisting the temptation to assume that the worst is behind them.

In Doha, the negotiating teams will be at it again tomorrow. On the trading floors of London, traders will be watching every twitch of the headline ticker. And in workshops and warehouses across the country, the slow, grinding question of how to pass on yet another round of input cost inflation to already-stretched customers will go on. As one Birmingham manufacturer put it to me this week: “We’ve been here before. We know how it ends. We just don’t know when.”

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Brent Crude jumps back to $99 as US strikes on Iran knock the wind out of peace talks

The German discounter has capitalised on the relentless household hunt for value, plotting a further 50 stores and a £600 million expansion that piles fresh pressure on the traditional big four.

When Lidl quietly opened its first British shop in the Leicestershire market town of Lutterworth in 1994, its competition came in the shape of names now consigned to retail history — Safeway, Somerfield and the original pile-it-high pioneer, Kwik Save. Three decades on, the German-owned chain has not only outlived those rivals but has now overtaken one of the original “big four” itself.

Lidl has surpassed Morrisons to become Britain’s fifth-biggest supermarket, capping a long run of market-share gains built on a stubbornly simple recipe of high volumes, lean ranges and aggressive everyday pricing. The discounter now commands a record 8.6 per cent of the UK grocery market, with sales rising 8.8 per cent to £3.2 billion over the 12 weeks to 17 May, according to the latest figures from consumer analyst Worldpanel by Numerator.

To put the trajectory into context, Lidl held just 1.4 per cent of the market at the turn of the millennium. It now sits ahead of Co-op (5.1 per cent), Waitrose (4.5 per cent), Iceland (2.2 per cent) and, in a milestone moment, Morrisons itself on 8.3 per cent. Sales growth at the chain has outpaced every other bricks-and-mortar grocer for almost three years on the trot.

Owned by Germany’s €167.3 billion-turnover Schwarz Group, Lidl GB now employs more than 35,000 people across 1,000 stores and 13 distribution centres. It has earmarked another 50 outlets for the year ahead as part of a wider £600 million investment in its British infrastructure, a programme that follows its £4 billion pledge to invest in British food suppliers as it tightens grip on its UK supply chain.

A familiar German playbook

The rise of Lidl and its fellow German discounter Aldi has been one of the defining storylines of UK retail over the past decade. Both have leant on aggressive price positioning, no-frills shopping environments and tightly edited ranges to wrong-foot the traditional grocers, and crucially, both have hoovered up middle-class shoppers along the way, forcing the rest of the sector to follow them down on price.

Cost-of-living pressures have only sharpened that shift. With food inflation still sticky, weekly shop tickets have become the household budget line that British families watch most closely. Looser planning and competition rules have also worked in the discounters’ favour, making it harder for incumbents to lock them out of prime new sites.

Yet the two German rivals are now diverging. Aldi’s market share has eased from 11 per cent to 10.8 per cent over the past year, while Lidl continues to motor, pushing into premium wine, in-store bakeries and plant-based ranges, and using its Lidl Plus loyalty app to do the kind of personalised promotional work that Tesco’s Clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar scheme have long relied on. Aldi has so far resisted following suit. According to Worldpanel, that range and loyalty push helped Lidl pull in an additional £661 million from switching shoppers last year alone.

“Becoming Great Britain’s fifth-largest supermarket is a significant milestone and a clear indication of the momentum we have built,” said Ryan McDonnell, chief executive of Lidl GB. “As customer expectations shift, households are looking for value they can rely on without compromising on quality, and we remain laser-focused on delivering exactly that. As we move forward with our ambitious expansion plans, we’ll bring great value and quality products to even more communities across Great Britain.”

Morrisons under the cosh

The mirror image of Lidl’s ascent is the strain showing at Morrisons. The Bradford-based grocer is wrestling with a debt pile of more than £3 billion under its private equity owner Clayton Dubilier & Rice, and its sales rose just 1.3 per cent year-on-year to £3.1 billion in the latest 12-week window, well behind Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, as reported by Bloomberg.

Morrisons argues the Worldpanel figures “underestimate” its true position because they exclude its convenience footprint. A spokesperson added that the grocer had “maintained our share while not opening new supermarkets, unlike the discounters who continue to add significant new space”.

Even so, the wider numbers are sobering. Morrisons posted a pre-tax loss of £381 million in its latest financial year, modestly improved on the £414 million loss the year before, and recently confirmed plans to close more than 100 loss-making Morrisons Daily convenience stores, blaming government policy choices for adding cost it could not absorb. The shift will be familiar to SME owners, particularly those running multi-site operations, who have spent the past year recalibrating models in the face of higher employer national insurance contributions and a steeper minimum wage.

For independent food producers, suppliers and store-fit specialists, the centre of gravity in UK grocery is moving, and quickly. Lidl’s pledged £600 million spend on stores, depots and logistics is exactly the kind of capital programme that pulls SMEs into the supply chain, from groundworks contractors to regional bakeries and challenger drinks brands hoping for a slot on the “middle aisle”. Aldi’s previous milestone moment, when it overtook Morrisons to become Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket, triggered a similar wave of supplier opportunity, and a brisk culling of those that could not flex on price.

The macro backdrop will not make life any easier for the traditional players. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has lifted energy prices and squeezed fertiliser supply, factors that are widely expected to push food price inflation higher over the coming months — only partially cushioned by the intensifying price war among the supermarkets themselves.

Overall spending at Britain’s biggest grocers rose 2.3 per cent to £36.6 billion in the three months to mid-May. Tesco remains untouchable at the top with 28.2 per cent market share, while Asda, like Morrisons, private equity-owned, saw the sharpest decline, with sales down 3 per cent to £4.2 billion and its share slipping to 11.5 per cent.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Worldpanel by Numerator, said shoppers had “leant on promotions to keep costs down”. Spending on promotional lines rose 9.5 per cent year-on-year, while full-price spend was virtually flat, a signal that, for now at least, the discount mindset that has powered Lidl’s rise is the defining feature of the British grocery basket.

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Lidl leapfrogs Morrisons to become Britain’s fifth-biggest supermarket

For Ovik Mkrtchyan, the lawsuit he has brought with Gor Investment against Straife is not only about money. It is also about reputation, family harm and what he describes as an effort to bring transparency to an alleged campaign that damaged his business and placed “at least thousands of false publications online.”

In a statement, Mkrtchyan said: “The events described in the complaint caused profound and lasting harms to me and my family that no amount of money can fully repair. In addition, the ongoing smear campaign against me has now placed at least thousands of false publications online in an effort to cause further harm. By seeking justice in the courts, I hope to bring appropriate transparency to what happened and to ensure that others do not suffer in the way that we did.”

Mkrtchyan added: “I stand behind the lawsuit and there is nothing I wish to add to the detailed complaint, as those matters will be addressed through the legal process.”

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, names Straife, a corporate intelligence firm with a Washington presence; its chief executive, Joseph Fleming; and Stephen Payne, a Washington lobbyist who, according to the complaint, has marketed his Washington connections and experience working in the George W. Bush White House. The plaintiffs bring claims including defamation, tortious interference, injurious falsehood and civil conspiracy.

At the heart of the case is Mkrtchyan’s allegation that people he once dealt with as advisers or associates later helped his adversaries damage him. According to the complaint, Straife and Fleming advised Mkrtchyan and Gor from 2022 on sensitive strategic and risk matters, receiving more than $100,000 in fees. Payne, who allegedly worked with Mkrtchyan and his companies from around 2016, is said to have introduced him to Fleming and Straife.

According to the complaint, the dispute arose from what the plaintiffs describe as a sanctions-related demand. The complaint alleges that Uzbek businessman Ulugbek Shadmanov and his team demanded that Mkrtchyan use his US relationships to help place two Uzbek nationals, Dmitry Lee and Komil Allamjonov, on the US sanctions list in order to prompt their prosecution in Uzbekistan. Mkrtchyan claims he refused, saying he viewed the demand as unlawful.

The plaintiffs allege that the consequences were severe. After the refusal, the complaint says Shadmanov began what the plaintiffs characterise as a campaign of retaliation. The complaint alleges that Mkrtchyan’s projects in Uzbekistan stalled, official support weakened and counterparties became reluctant to proceed.

In January 2024, according to the complaint, Mkrtchyan and his daughter were detained by officers of Uzbekistan’s State Security Service. His daughter was released, but he remained in detention for several months. The complaint alleges he was confined in harsh conditions, repeatedly interrogated, denied access to medication and pressured to confess to crimes he denied. He was released on April 12, 2024, and the complaint says official records confirm he was cleared of all charges.

The lawsuit says the damage continued after his release. According to the complaint, Straife and Fleming had proposed a course of action to secure Mkrtchyan’s release that Gor rejected on legal grounds. After the relationship ended, the plaintiffs allege Straife and Fleming agreed to assist Shadmanov and United Cement Group, or UCG, in interfering with Mkrtchyan’s projects, contracts and reputation.

One of the most detailed allegations involves an unsigned multi-page report titled “Report on the Nefarious Activities of Uktam Aripov.” The complaint alleges Straife and Fleming prepared the document, which focused on Aripov, an associate of Mkrtchyan, but also included allegations about Mkrtchyan and his wider network. The plaintiffs allege the report was left unsigned in order to conceal Straife’s and Fleming’s involvement in preparing it.

According to the complaint, former US ambassador Stephen Akard later sent the report, together with a cover letter, to Uzbekistan’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and Uzbekistan’s ambassador in Washington, Furqat Sidikov, on August 16, 2024. The plaintiffs allege this placed damaging claims before senior Uzbek officials while obscuring Straife’s role in preparing the material.

The complaint places particular emphasis on Payne’s alleged role. According to the complaint, in April 2024, while Mkrtchyan was detained, Payne wrote in support of his release, attesting to his innocence and blaming Shadmanov and UCG. The complaint says Payne later reversed course after Fleming approached him and persuaded him to change his position.

 

The plaintiffs allege Payne acted at Fleming’s and UCG’s direction when he sent an August 23, 2024 letter retracting his earlier support. According to the complaint, that letter set out allegations against Mkrtchyan that included references to purported links to Russian organised crime, extortion and unethical conduct—allegations Mkrtchyan denies and which the complaint describes as false.

The complaint alleges Payne worked with Fleming to draft the letter, copied Fleming on related correspondence, requested confidentiality and separately contacted Ambassador Sidikov in Washington in connection with the letter. The plaintiffs allege that Payne’s reversal was, in their characterisation, connected to subsequent lobbying and consulting arrangements.

The complaint also alleges that Payne later provided information about Mkrtchyan, Gor and Aripov to a journalist, with the aim, the plaintiffs say, of encouraging publication of material aligned with the August 2024 letter and the Straife report. The complaint states that the journalist responded sceptically to one of the items Payne had sent.

For Mkrtchyan and Gor, the complaint alleges that the reputational campaign had commercial consequences. The complaint says the defendants’ alleged conduct helped disrupt major projects and damage relationships involving companies including BASF, CC7 and CITIC. The plaintiffs claim CITIC had indicated a willingness to invest more than $1.5 billion in one of the projects and that total losses exceed $1 billion.

The lawsuit also points to a later retraction. On October 29, 2025, Akard and his firm wrote to Uzbekistan’s president and ambassador retracting the August 2024 letter and report. According to the complaint, Akard said the material had been sent at UCG’s request, that the report had been prepared for UCG by Straife, and that neither he nor his firm had independently verified or could substantiate the allegations.

The allegations concerning Payne also come against the backdrop of a separate arbitration involving NRCO Engineering S.A., a company owned by Mkrtchyan, Payne and Linden Energy. In a May 1, 2026 Final Award, an ICDR arbitrator found in NRCO’s favour, and NRCO has petitioned the Southern District of Texas to confirm the award and enter judgment for more than $2.19 million.

In the award, the arbitrator examined Payne’s August 2024 letter to the President of Uzbekistan, in which Payne retracted his earlier letter supporting Mkrtchyan. The award states that the August letter included allegations against Mkrtchyan and Aripov, including alleged ties to Russian organised crime, threats and extortion. The arbitrator found that Payne and Logan Somera, who the award says assisted in drafting the letter, did not produce credible evidence supporting the assertions in the August retraction letter. The award also found that Payne actively attempted to conceal the existence of the letter from Mkrtchyan and Aripov.

The allegations in the D.C. complaint remain unproven. The defendants will have the opportunity to contest the complaint, challenge the plaintiffs’ account, and present their own evidence. The separate NRCO arbitration award has already made findings against Payne and Linden in a different dispute, but it does not determine the defendants’ liability in the D.C. proceedings.

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Ovik Mkrtchyan Says Lawsuit Is About Clearing His Name After Alleged Reputational Campaign