Business

Revolut, the fintech that has long worn its remote-first credentials as a badge of difference, has confirmed that its newest recruits will no longer enjoy the same freedom.

From 2027, graduates and interns joining the company will be required to spend at least three days a week in the office, a notable shift for a business that has spent years arguing that results matter more than location.

The change applies only to those at the very start of their careers. Explaining the decision, the company said “the early stages of a career benefit from in-person collaboration and mentoring”, a line of reasoning that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the steady retreat from fully remote working across the City. For everyone else, Revolut was at pains to stress, “our remote-first policy is unchanged”.

It is a carefully drawn distinction. Until now, graduates were free to choose whether they worked from home or came into the office, and the company’s headline-grabbing perks remain firmly in place. Chief among them is the 120-day “workation”, which lets staff work remotely from abroad, “exploring new cultures while staying productive and connected”. Chief executive Nik Storonsky, who co-founded Revolut in 2015 with Vlad Yatsenko, told staff last year that the firm cared “more about what you do than where you do it”, and insisted the flexible approach would survive as long as productivity held up.

The recalibration arrives at a moment of considerable momentum for the group. Revolut became a fully licensed UK bank earlier this year after a long wait for regulatory approval, and was valued at 75 billion dollars in November 2025, eclipsing several of Britain’s established high street lenders. Founded as an app that let people in the UK and Europe spend abroad at interbank exchange rates, it now serves more than 70 million customers and supports transfers across roughly 160 countries and regions. The company has also signalled that about 40 per cent of its 12,000-strong global workforce, spread across more than 30 countries, will be based in India by the end of this year.

For all the talk of disruption, the policy itself looks rather conventional. Hybrid working is now firmly the British norm: the Office for National Statistics reported in June 2025 that around 28 per cent of workers split their week between home and the office, with the figure rising to nearly half in information and communications businesses. The debate over whether younger staff in particular should be in the room has been running for some time, with voices ranging from JP Morgan’s leadership to Lord Sugar urging young people to get their “bums back into the office”.

Employment lawyers see little to quarrel with. Jo Mackie, employment law partner at national firm Michelmores, said Revolut was “falling into line with most other major employers in making hybrid working the norm, when practical”, adding that “working alongside colleagues is particularly important for junior staff to learn and be mentored”. The sentiment is echoed across the sector, where HR specialists have noted a growing consensus that early-career development is hard to replicate over video calls.

The wider message for Revolut watchers is one of maturation. A company built on doing things differently is, in this corner at least, beginning to look a little more like the institutions it set out to challenge.

The Midlands has overtaken every other part of Britain outside the capital for foreign direct investment (FDI) employment, creating almost 6,000 jobs last year even as investment into the UK slumped to a ten-year low.

According to the EY 2026 UK Attractiveness Survey, the region generated 5,970 FDI-related jobs in 2025, more than Scotland and Wales combined and equivalent to roughly one in five of all such jobs created across the UK. That makes it the leading location for overseas-backed employment outside London, a notable result in a year when global investors turned cautious.

The region also landed 102 FDI projects, ranking it behind only Greater London and Scotland for the volume of inward investment won. The figure represents 14 per cent of all UK projects, the Midlands’ third-highest share in a decade.

Investor sentiment, meanwhile, is pointing upwards. Among companies planning to invest, the West Midlands is now seen as the third most attractive UK region, and Birmingham ranks as the second most sought-after city outside the capital, despite the reputational knocks the city has absorbed over the past year.

The headline numbers are all the more striking given the wider backdrop. Project numbers across Europe fell by 6.6 per cent in 2025, while the UK recorded a sharper 14.4 per cent decline, securing 730 projects nationally, the lowest tally in ten years.

Only three parts of the UK bucked the trend on project numbers: Greater London, up 5 per cent, Northern Ireland, up 65 per cent, and Wales, up 56 per cent. The South West held flat, and every other region went backwards. The Midlands itself was not immune, with projects down 16.4 per cent year on year and FDI jobs off 29.3 per cent, from the 122 projects and 8,439 jobs it banked in 2024.

Even so, holding on to the top regional spot for jobs and a podium position for projects, while the national market shrank, underlines the region’s pull for international capital. As one recent analysis of regional investment trends has noted, the competition between UK regions for overseas money has intensified, making the Midlands’ staying power more meaningful than the raw decline might suggest.

Business and professional services emerged as the standout sector for the Midlands, drawing 18 projects, a sharp jump from just five in 2024. Transportation manufacturers and suppliers came second with 16 projects, while software and IT services climbed to third with 14, up from nine the year before.

The United States remained the single largest source of investment, accounting for 14.7 per cent of projects. Germany, India and France followed, each delivering 10 projects apiece.

That momentum builds on a longer run of form. The region was recently named the UK’s top regional destination for foreign investment, and has previously been recognised as one of Europe’s strongest performers for inward investment strategy, finishing second in the continent at a major European investment awards.

Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, said his economic strategy was beginning to bear fruit. “My Growth Plan is clear in targeting international markets to get our economy firing on all cylinders. And it’s an approach that’s working. More jobs are now being created by global companies in the region than in any UK location outside of London,” he said.

“My recent trade missions to India and China, alongside the Prime Minister, have opened even more doors for our businesses, universities and other investors. Getting more deals over the line with some of the world’s biggest players will help deliver my number one priority as Mayor, a stronger economy with more high-quality jobs for local people and more money in their pockets.”

Claire Ward, Mayor of the East Midlands, said the figures reflected confidence in the wider region. “These figures underline the Midlands’ continued strength as a destination for international investment in a highly competitive global market, and demonstrates sustained investor confidence in our people, businesses and places,” she said. “For the East Midlands, international investment creates high-quality jobs, strengthens local supply chains, and expands opportunity in communities across our region.”

Neil Rami, chief executive of the West Midlands Growth Company, struck a more cautionary note on what it will take to keep the momentum going. “Our unmatched scale, connected innovation ecosystem and deep talent pool make the region a compelling proposition for international investors,” he said. “However, in an increasingly competitive global market, investment does not simply follow economic fundamentals. Sustaining growth will require continued targeted intervention, strong international partnerships and a clear, market-led proposition that aligns investor demand with local opportunities.”

The picture is reinforced by separate official data. The Department for Business and Trade’s inward investment results for 2025/26 show the West Midlands attracted more FDI jobs, 18,036, over the past three years than any UK location outside London. The region secured 10 per cent of all UK projects and 18 per cent of projects and jobs created outside the capital, with its 25 per cent fall in projects broadly mirroring a 26 per cent national decline.

Behind the statistics sit a string of concrete wins. Networking and security giant Cisco has chosen STEAMhouse in Birmingham’s Knowledge Quarter, part of the West Midlands Investment Zone, as the home of new office space.

Adele Every, managing director, public sector at Cisco UK and Ireland, said the city’s assets made the decision straightforward. “Top tech talent, world-class innovation infrastructure and a collaborative ecosystem are key to our mission of powering an inclusive future for all. Birmingham’s strengths in these areas were clear to see, making it the obvious location for our new regional hub.”

Other arrivals span fintech, fashion and software. Islamic property finance provider Offa has invested in new offices in Solihull, where executive chairman Sultan Choudhury said the firm’s team had doubled in size over the past year. Australian fashion brand Hello Molly has opened an e-commerce warehouse in Dudley, with operations director Ena Eaton praising the region’s “excellent transport and logistics infrastructure”. Software provider Target Integration has set up in Coventry through the West Midlands Global Growth Programme, with chief executive Rohit Thakral citing the city’s proximity to the West Midlands tech sector and the University of Warwick Science Park.

The Growth Programme, which offers tailored support to help international businesses navigate the UK investment process, is now accepting applications for 2026.

The King’s property company has held back almost £1 billion to bankroll its own investment pipeline, choosing to keep the cash on its balance sheet rather than hand it to the Treasury while it waits for landmark borrowing powers to be switched on.

Revenue account profit, the Crown Estate’s preferred measure, fell by 58 per cent over the year to £487 million, down from a record £1.15 billion the year before, according to annual accounts published on Thursday. The drop was driven largely by a decision to set aside £886 million for new capital projects, more than double the £441 million retained a year earlier. The share of gross revenues kept back jumped from 27 per cent to 60 per cent.

For a 265-year-old institution that has spent most of its life simply passing profits up to the public purse, that is a notable shift in posture, and it tells you everything about where the organisation believes it is heading.

Two forces pulled the headline number lower. The first was the deliberate hoarding of cash. The second was the fading of the offshore wind windfall that flattered the books in recent years.

So-called option fees, the payments developers made to reserve patches of seabed after winning the rights to build new wind farms in January 2023, slid 18 per cent from £1.07 billion to £875 million as those projects moved from speculation towards construction. Strip out the option fees and the underlying picture was steadier: revenue edged up from £560 million to £600 million, and underlying profit held at a healthy £1.37 billion. As we reported when the estate matched its record profits on the windfarm windfall, management had already warned that the boom was temporary.

The six wind farms behind those fees, sited off the coasts of Cumbria, Lancashire and north Wales, are expected to generate enough renewable power for eight million homes a year once they are running, though the sector’s wider build-out has not been without questions over delivery timelines.

Net asset value, the worth of everything the Crown Estate owns, rose from £15 billion to £16.7 billion. Part of that gain came from buying a 220-acre site in Oxfordshire earmarked for laboratory space, which the estate reckons could add £2.5 billion to GDP and create 30,000 jobs nationally.

The reason for stockpiling cash is straightforward. Under the Crown Estate Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in March last year, the business will be able to borrow to fund capital spending for the first time in its history. The government and the estate are still hammering out the precise terms, with the memorandum of understanding setting a loan-to-value ceiling of 25 per cent. On Thursday the estate estimated the powers could unlock up to £5 billion of investment over the next decade, money it says will “materially increase the money returned for public spending”.

“This additional retained revenue will support increased investment in areas that will further boost the public finances and energy security, create jobs and benefit communities,” the Crown Estate said.

Dan Labbad, chief executive, struck a similar note. “Over recent years we have delivered strong growth for the country and invested in areas of national importance including renewable energy, housing and science and innovation. With the new powers approved by parliament, retaining more revenue for investment, we can now go further, boosting long-term investment in these sectors and generating increased returns for public spending.”

The Crown Estate hands its profits to the Treasury, which then passes a slice to the royal family as the sovereign grant. That share was cut from 25 per cent to 12 per cent in 2023 to reflect the surge in profitability from offshore wind.

Here is the wrinkle. Payments to the King are pegged to the estate’s profits from two years earlier, so the grant is set to climb sharply because the Crown Estate booked profits north of £1 billion in that reference period. The mechanics of how the Treasury’s return has moved with the wind windfall are worth watching for anyone tracking the cost of the monarchy.

The relationship dates back to 1760, when George III agreed to surrender the profits from the royal land holdings to parliament in exchange for a fixed annual payment. Over the past decade the Crown Estate has returned £5.1 billion to the Treasury.

The more interesting story is structural. By handing the estate the freedom to borrow, the government has nudged it a step closer to resembling a sovereign wealth fund, the sort of investment vehicle designed to channel returns into assets for the wider economy. Ministers were explicit about the ambition when the Act passed, framing the new flexibility as a route to invest in Britain’s future across decarbonisation, nature recovery, housing and growth.

Before the legislation, the estate could only sell assets to raise cash for reinvestment, a clumsy constraint for a portfolio of its scale. It expects to use the new powers “modestly” at first, before deploying them in earnest towards the end of the decade.

The estate is in little doubt about why it won the freedom. Its annual report argues the Act was passed “as a result of our strong track record and significant potential to drive economic growth and create value for the country”. That is a fair reading, even if the recent record has leaned heavily on those one-off option fees rather than the day-to-day grind of the property book.

Whether the Crown Estate can turn borrowing freedom into the kind of durable, diversified returns a true sovereign wealth fund delivers is the open question. For now, it has a near £1 billion head start and a decade to prove the point.

A Hampshire letting agent has launched a free property portal, wagering that agents and landlords worn down by the rising cost of advertising will welcome a route to market that does not come with a monthly bill.

Find My Move, the brainchild of letting agent Mark Vine and housing professional Chris Moss, has signed up more than 9,000 subscribers and stitched together a network of listings drawn from over 6,600 estate and letting agencies across the country. The platform now carries upwards of 58,000 rental properties and more than 435,000 homes for sale, with subscriber numbers climbing by around 3,000 a month.

More than half of registered users are actively searching for a property, the founders say, and over 200,000 people have visited the site in the past three months.

The timing is pointed. Frustration over what agents pay to list their stock has been building for years, and the figures help explain why. Analysis reported by Property Industry Eye found that Rightmove’s listing fees can swallow as much as 13.5 per cent of an estate agency’s sales commission in lower-value markets such as Glasgow and Newcastle, with the average British agent handing over 7.2 per cent. For independent firms already wrestling with tighter margins, that is a sizeable slice of income.

Those pressures land on a private rented sector that is itself under strain. Average UK private rents rose 4.4 per cent in the year to November 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, squeezing tenants while landlords face higher borrowing and compliance costs of their own.

The idea for Find My Move grew out of Vine’s experience running a letting agency and the conversations it prompted with fellow professionals.

“After six years in lettings, I found myself having the same conversations with agents time and again,” Vine said. “Many felt they were paying increasingly large sums simply to advertise housing stock at a time when businesses across the sector are facing growing pressures.

“We wanted to create a platform that offered agents and landlords another route to market without the significant costs often associated with property advertising. The response so far has been extremely encouraging and gives us confidence that there is genuine demand for a different approach.

“With more than 9,000 subscribers already on the platform and thousands more joining every month, we believe Find My Move can become a valuable additional channel for agents, landlords and property seekers alike.”

Unlike the established portals, Find My Move is free for agents and landlords to use, with the founders planning to earn revenue through advertising and commercial partnerships rather than subscriptions. It is a model that echoes a wider appetite for lower-cost listing options, a theme Business Matters has explored in its rundown of the top free rental property listing websites in the UK.

Chris Moss said the immediate focus was growth. “Our priority is to continue growing the number of agents, landlords and property seekers using the platform across the UK,” he said. “We’ve created Find My Move to be accessible, straightforward and beneficial for everyone involved in the property journey. The scale of engagement we’ve seen already shows there is an appetite for new ideas and alternative ways of connecting people with property opportunities.”

The platform will remain free for agents and landlords for the foreseeable future, the pair say, as they concentrate on expansion and building awareness across a sector where questions of standards and oversight remain live, as Business Matters has reported in its coverage of calls for regulation of property agents.

Longer term, the founders want Find My Move to play a broader role in widening access to housing, working with agents, landlords, local authorities and other stakeholders to help more people find suitable accommodation. For landlords still weighing how to bring a property to market, the perennial question of whether to use a letting agent at all is one the new portal is quietly hoping to reshape.

Britain’s tax system should be reshaped to reward investment in homegrown companies and halt the “overseas stripping” of the country’s most innovative businesses, according to one of the economists advising Andy Burnham as he assembles a policy programme for a possible move to Downing Street.

Andy Haldane, president of the British Chambers of Commerce and a former chief economist at the Bank of England, told the organisation’s annual conference in London that the billions of pounds the Treasury spends each year on pension tax relief represented a “ready made” and “largely fiscal-free way” of giving British growth what he called “a genuine giddy-up”.

Haldane, who Burnham has been consulting as the Greater Manchester mayor prepares his pitch for No 10, framed the idea as a “third way” between “unfettered free markets” and the outright “mandation” of how pension funds allocate their money. For SME owners and the scale-up community, the proposal goes to the heart of a long-running complaint: that British capital too often flows everywhere except British business.

The numbers Haldane set out are striking. “This government, startlingly, extends over £50 billion in pension tax relief and more than £10 billion in tax relief for Isas,” he told delegates. “That means, as a country, we spend more in tax relief on savings than we do on defence. Yet these benefits are conferred without any accompanying commitment to support British businesses, or therefore UK growth. Most are implicitly supporting US corporations and indeed foreign governments.”

Redirecting those incentives, he argued, would “deliver a far larger return while keeping decisions on those investments in the hands of managers”, rather than ministers. The distinction matters. The Treasury has so far stopped short of compelling pension funds to back UK companies, wary of criticism that doing so would cut across the duty to secure the best possible returns for savers. Recent reporting has already shown some savers withdrawing pension cash amid fears of tax changes in the run-up to the Budget, underlining how sensitive any reform of pension incentives will be.

Haldane’s pitch is designed to sidestep that objection. Rather than handing ministers the power to mandate where pension money goes, he wants the tax relief itself to do the steering, nudging capital towards domestic firms while leaving the investment calls with fund managers.

Central to his case is the idea that Britain is an international outlier. The debate, he insisted, should not be about “constraining choices” but about mirroring the “home bias” already common elsewhere. “Their pension funds invest between 20 per cent and 40 per cent in their own companies, multiples of their global market share,” Haldane said of pension systems in Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan. “The UK’s pension fund system, big and mature, is the only pension system in the world that does not have such a home bias.”

He also pointed to public appetite for change, citing surveys suggesting more than 70 per cent of British investors would rather see their pensions invested in UK companies. On that basis, he said, there was “a strong case” for the default option under pensions auto-enrolment being into British firms.

Westminster and the City have wrestled for years with how to keep promising ventures growing on home soil rather than being acquired and spirited overseas. Haldane welcomed existing efforts, singling out the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund, but said both remained on a “modest scale”. The “quantitative impact” of the government’s Mansion House reforms to lift pension fund investment in UK companies would, he added, “still be modest in the near term”.

His warning to policymakers was blunt. “We simply cannot afford to allow the continuation of overseas stripping of our greatest growth asset, innovative businesses, on this scale,” he said. “Doing so is tantamount to willingly sacrificing growth and jobs.” Government, he argued, needed a “level of boldness” to “act at speed and scale” and take “full advantage of the UK’s brilliant businesses before they perish on the vine or are plucked off by overseas foreign raiders”.

He ended with a flourish aimed squarely at the country’s business and political leadership: “Fortunately, in the UK we have, hiding in plain sight, not one but two gift horses, British business and British capital. Let’s not, as leaders, continue to look these in the mouth.”

Speaking later on the conference fringes, Haldane said a Burnham-led government should radically simplify what he described as a “stupendously complex” tax code, and called for a “systematic and seismic” cutting back of “the thicket of regulation”, themes that will resonate with smaller firms who routinely cite red tape and compliance costs as a brake on growth.

The conference drew senior figures from across the five main parties. Among them was Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, who told the audience she had “unfinished business”, including pursuing fiscal devolution.

Whether Haldane’s “third way” makes it into a formal programme remains to be seen. But with more than £60 billion of annual tax relief in play, and a growing political consensus that British savings should do more for British growth, the question of how that money is directed looks set to stay firmly on the agenda.

The Crown Estate has handed the Treasury less than half of what it returned a year ago, after the extraordinary offshore wind windfall that powered two years of record earnings began to wash out of its accounts.

The body that manages the monarch’s land and property portfolio, which also controls the seabed and much of the coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, reported that the profit it passes to government to support public spending tumbled to £487 million in the year to March, down from £1.1 billion a year earlier. That is a fall of more than £600 million, and it leaves the public purse with roughly £500 million less than the previous year’s bumper handover once the swing in revenue is accounted for.

Operating profits told a gentler version of the same story, easing to £1.2 billion from £1.4 billion. The Crown Estate pinned the decline squarely on offshore wind, where a previous surge in income from option fees, the payments developers make to reserve a patch of seabed before they commit to building turbines, has faded now that those projects are moving into construction. Those fees had inflated earnings to record levels across the prior two years, a one-off boost the organisation has repeatedly warned would not last.

It is a reversal that had been well signalled. When the Crown Estate matched its record windfarm profits last year, it cautioned that the boom was temporary, with the option-fee income set to normalise as the leasing round progressed. The latest figures are the first to show that prediction arriving on the balance sheet.

Strip out the wind farm option fees, though, and the underlying picture looks rather healthier. The marine business lifted operating profits to £175 million, helped by favourable wind conditions, new offshore capacity coming online and expansion across the sector. The real estate and development arm grew profits to £258 million from £242 million, carried by the strength of London’s West End.

The value of the portfolio also moved firmly in the right direction. Net asset value rose to £16.7 billion from £15 billion a year earlier, reflecting a rebound in property values over the period. Over the past decade, according to the Crown Estate’s own figures, the business has returned around £5 billion to the Treasury in total.

The results land as the organisation gears up for a markedly more ambitious phase. After the Crown Estate Act 2025 handed it new borrowing and investment powers, granting greater flexibility over how it deploys capital, it has set out plans to invest up to £5 billion over the next decade across renewable energy, housing and science and innovation. That includes the next wave of seabed development, from the North Sea to the Celtic Sea, where it has already floated plans for floating wind farms capable of powering millions of homes.

Dan Labbad, chief executive of the Crown Estate, said the figures showed “both the strength of our underlying business and the importance of taking a long-term approach to managing national assets”. He added: “Over recent years, we have delivered strong growth for the country and invested in areas of national importance including renewable energy, housing and science and innovation.”

The challenge now is one of timing. The option-fee income that flattered recent results has done its job, drawing developers to the seabed, but the turbines themselves take years to build and the construction pipeline has not been without friction across the wider industry. Converting today’s leases into tomorrow’s recurring marine income will determine whether the Crown Estate can keep its contribution to the public finances from sliding further before the next generation of offshore wind comes good.

Polestar, the part Chinese-owned electric brand spun out of Volvo, is to abandon the United States after the Commerce Department refused it permission to keep selling new cars, making the company the first casualty of a sweeping American clampdown on Chinese technology in vehicles.

The decision is the opening blow from a rule designed to strip Chinese-written software out of any new car that connects to the internet, a measure Washington frames as shutting the door on the cameras, microphones and GPS systems that it fears could be turned into surveillance tools by a hostile state. For Britain’s small and medium-sized suppliers watching the trade winds, it is a pointed reminder that ownership and code, not just where a car is bolted together, now decide market access.

Polestar, which is controlled by the Chinese motoring giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, had applied to carry on selling under a waiver process written into the rule. The government turned it down, the company confirmed on Thursday. The Commerce Department did not immediately comment.

The brand said it would keep selling its remaining American stock and would honour servicing and repairs through its existing network, leaving current owners covered even as the shutters come down on new sales.

Drawn up under the previous administration, the “connected vehicle” rule restricts the import or sale of cars whose hardware and software are tied to China, on national-security grounds. The final rule took effect in March 2025 and has been carried forward rather than unpicked by the current White House.

Carmakers were given until March of this year to certify to the US government that their products carried no code written in China or by a Chinese company, or else to petition for authorisation to keep selling from the 2027 model year onwards. It is a high bar, and one that bites on corporate parentage as much as on the bill of materials.

That distinction explains an awkward split within the Geely empire. Volvo, also majority-owned by the Chinese group, secured authorisation in May to keep trading in the US, after what it described as a case-by-case review and talks with officials over its technology and data security. Polestar, working through the same process, did not clear it.

The rejection is the latest step in a broader American push to wall off Chinese-owned cars. Lawmakers have spent recent weeks floating legislation that would go further still, barring Chinese manufacturers from even building vehicles on US soil.

Polestar had sounded confident it would comply. Chief executive Michael Lohscheller said in a recent interview that the company was “in good dialogue with authorities” about an exemption, adding: “The US is important because obviously it’s a big market.”

Founded as Volvo’s performance and motorsport arm, Polestar became a stand-alone brand in 2017 and was hived off as a separate company in 2021, floating through a special-purpose acquisition vehicle at the height of the electric-car frenzy, when traditional carmakers and start-ups alike scrambled to chase Tesla’s vertiginous share price.

It launched with the limited-edition Polestar 1, a hybrid coupe priced at $156,000, and the Polestar 2, a sporting electric saloon built in China that took early aim at the Tesla Model 3. But a thin line-up left it exposed, particularly in the US, where buyers lean heavily towards SUVs and pick-up trucks. The shares now change hands at $19.22, down 96 per cent from a closing peak of $459.90 in November 2021.

Its Chinese ties had already proved costly. Punitive tariffs imposed by both the Biden and Trump administrations pushed the China-built Polestar 2 out of the American range. Today the brand sells the Polestar 3 SUV, made at Volvo’s plant in South Carolina, and the Polestar 4 SUV, shipped in from South Korea, neither of them built in China.

Polestar said it would now concentrate on shoring up its European business, which already accounts for roughly 80 per cent of global sales. The pivot lands at a moment when the politics of Chinese-built electric cars is fraught on both sides of the Atlantic, with the EU pressing ahead with tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles despite resistance from Germany.

Britain, for its part, is treading a notably different path, courting rather than repelling Chinese capital. The recent Nissan deal to build Chery’s cars in Sunderland underlines how far the UK’s calculation diverges from Washington’s, even as ministers face their own pressure to rethink the 2030 timetable for phasing out petrol cars.

For Lohscheller, the lesson is that the global car market is fragmenting along geographic lines. “The automotive industry is entering a new phase, based on regional dynamics,” he said on Wednesday. For Polestar, that new phase begins with a continent’s worth of ambition and a closed door in the world’s most valuable car market.

The way commercial spaces are designed has changed considerably in recent years. Businesses across the UK, from hotel groups and restaurant operators to recording studios and corporate office developers, are investing in acoustic ceiling treatment as a standard component of their fit-out rather than an optional upgrade.

At the centre of that shift is fabric ceiling installation, a specialist system that delivers both acoustic performance and a premium visual finish that alternatives simply cannot match.

This article covers what fabric ceiling installation involves, why UK businesses are specifying it, and what to consider before commissioning the work.

What Is a Fabric Ceiling Installation?

A fabric ceiling installation uses a precision aluminium track frame fixed to the ceiling structure, with an acoustic infill core installed within the frame and an acoustically transparent fabric stretched across the face to produce a seamless, unbroken surface. Unlike a traditional suspended ceiling grid with modular tiles, a fabric ceiling produces no visible joints, no panel edges, and no exposed fixings. The result is a continuous ceiling surface that looks intentional and considered rather than functional and utilitarian.

The fabric face is acoustically transparent by design, meaning sound waves pass through the material and into the infill core behind it, where the energy is absorbed rather than reflected back into the room. This is what gives the system its acoustic credentials. Hard ceiling surfaces, whether plaster, concrete, or standard ceiling tiles, reflect sound back into the space, increasing reverberation times and creating echoes that affect the quality of communication, concentration, and experience within the room.

A correctly specified fabric ceiling addresses this directly. By absorbing sound at the ceiling plane, which is typically the largest unobstructed reflective surface in any room, the system reduces reverberation times measurably and creates a noticeably more comfortable acoustic environment for everyone in the space.

Why Businesses Are Choosing Fabric Ceiling Installation

The reasons businesses are moving towards fabric ceiling installation over alternative acoustic treatments come down to three factors: acoustic performance, visual quality, and long-term value.

In terms of acoustic performance, a fabric ceiling installation with the correct infill core delivers sound absorption ratings that match or exceed those of most alternative ceiling systems. NRC ratings close to 1.0 are achievable with the right specification, meaning the system absorbs almost all sound energy that reaches the ceiling surface rather than reflecting it. For environments where the quality of communication or listening is directly tied to business outcomes, such as boardrooms, hotel conference suites, post-production facilities, and client-facing showrooms, this level of performance justifies the investment.

In terms of visual quality, no other acoustic ceiling treatment produces a finish comparable to that of a properly installed fabric ceiling. There are no visible tiles, no exposed grid, no shadow lines between panels, and no fixings. The ceiling reads as a single, continuous surface, elevating the perceived quality of the entire space. In hospitality environments, high-end offices, and retail interiors, this matters enormously. Customers and clients form immediate impressions based on the quality of the environment they enter, and a premium-looking ceiling directly contributes to that perception.

In the long term, fabric ceiling systems are built to last. When properly specified and installed, the system has a lifespan of fifteen to twenty years or more. The fabric can be replaced without removing the underlying track and infill structure, and access panels can be incorporated into the design to maintain services concealed behind the ceiling surface.

Where Fabric Ceiling Installation Is Specified

Fabric ceiling installation is specified across a wide range of commercial and professional environments in the UK.

Recording studios and post-production facilities represent the most acoustically demanding application. In these environments, the ceiling treatment is a critical part of the room’s acoustic design, working alongside wall panels and bass traps to achieve the precise reverberation time targets the room requires. Fabritech has completed fabric ceiling installations in facilities for Abbey Road Studios, Netflix, Apple, and Spotify, where the acoustic performance requirements are among the most exacting in the industry.

Hotels and hospitality venues are an increasingly significant market for fabric ceiling installation. Conference suites, restaurant dining rooms, event spaces, and hotel lobbies all benefit from controlled acoustics, and the premium visual finish of a fabric ceiling aligns with the design standards that guests expect in high-end hospitality environments.

Commercial offices and workspaces have seen growing demand for acoustic ceiling treatment since the shift to open-plan layouts accelerated. The ceiling is often the largest untreated acoustic surface in an office, and addressing it with a fabric ceiling installation can significantly reduce background noise, improve speech clarity across meeting and collaboration zones, and create a more productive working environment.

Home cinemas and private screening rooms represent the residential end of the market, where homeowners commissioning dedicated cinema rooms increasingly specify fabric ceiling installations as part of a complete acoustic and visual treatment package.

What to Consider Before Commissioning Fabric Ceiling Installation

For any business considering fabric ceiling installation, there are several practical factors to work through before the project begins.

Acoustic brief and performance targets should be established early. The specification of the infill core, track depth, and coverage area is determined by the acoustic targets for the space, whether that means meeting a specific reverberation time, achieving a defined NRC rating, or simply improving the general acoustic comfort of the environment. Engaging the installer at the design stage, rather than after the main contractor has finished, produces significantly better results.

Fire compliance is non-negotiable. All fabrics used in commercial ceiling installations must meet UK building regulations and be assessed against the European standard EN 13501-1. Any reputable fabric ceiling installer will provide full fire rating documentation for all specified materials before installation begins and should be able to advise on the appropriate classification for the specific building type and use.

Fabric selection affects both the acoustic outcome and the visual finish of the installation. Fabritech holds direct accounts with leading acoustic fabric manufacturers including Kvadrat, Camira Fabrics, and Guilford of Maine, giving clients access to a wide range of colours, textures, and performance-rated materials. The specified fabric must be acoustically transparent to ensure the system performs correctly, and all materials must carry the appropriate fire ratings for the environment.

Specialist installation is essential. Fabric ceiling installation is not a standard fit-out trade. The track fabrication, infill specification, and fabric stretching processes require specialist knowledge and experience to be delivered correctly. Incorrect installation results in uneven fabric tension, acoustic inconsistencies, and a finished ceiling that falls short of both its visual and acoustic potential.

Working With a Specialist

Fabritech is a UK specialist in fabric ceiling installation for commercial, professional, and residential environments. As preferred installer for Studio Creations and Westwood Joinery, the UK’s leading studio construction companies, Fabritech delivers fabric ceiling systems for recording studios, post-production facilities, hotels, commercial offices, and high-end residential projects across the UK. For project enquiries and specification advice, visit fabritech.co.uk/services/fabric-ceiling/.

Rachel Reeves has declared that she has “unfinished business” as chancellor, singling out fiscal devolution as the policy she is most determined to see through, in remarks that will be read closely by a business community bracing for a change at the top of government.

Speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference in London on Thursday, Reeves pointed to the handing of tax-raising powers to local leaders as the area of “unfinished business” she wants to complete. The intervention comes at a delicate moment, with Andy Burnham set to enter Downing Street next month following Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation on Monday, and with the City still guessing over who will take the keys to No 11.

For the SME owners who make up the bulk of the chambers’ membership, the politics matter less than the policy signal. A chancellor talking openly about devolving revenue, and a prime minister-in-waiting who built his reputation on it, points to a meaningful shift in where decisions about local growth, and local taxation, will be taken.

The visitor levy and the case for going local

The former mayor of Greater Manchester is moving quickly to assemble a programme for government that is widely expected to push more powers and revenue away from Westminster. Reeves made clear she is travelling in the same direction.

“The area where there’s certainly unfinished business is on fiscal devolution,” she said. “And I set out in last year’s Budget a consultation, for example, on the visitor levy, which is something that mayoral combined authorities will have responsibility for, moving us more in line with the US and Europe that have single visitor levies on hotel bookings, for example, and then that money being invested in the local area.”

A visitor levy on overnight stays has become one of the more contested ideas in the devolution debate, with metro mayors pressing for the power and parts of the hospitality sector warning about the impact on bookings. The tension was on full display earlier this year when mayoral calls for a hotel ‘tourist tax’ drew a wary response from the hospitality trade.

Reeves indicated her ambitions stretch well beyond hotel rooms. “But beyond that, we are also consulting on devolving some revenues from key taxes, including income tax, but also looking at some business and land taxes and devolving that to a local level so that local leaders who know their areas best can decide where that money is going to be spent.”

The chancellor, the first woman to hold the office, said she intends to set out the detail in this year’s Budget. The direction of travel echoes the government’s own English Devolution White Paper, which created a route for mayors to propose new powers while leaving the Treasury notably cautious on tax.

Reeves stops short on the chancellorship

For all the talk of alignment, Reeves declined to say outright that she wants to keep her job under a Burnham premiership. “When he becomes prime minister, he will make those decisions around the top team around him. But I’m not going to pre-empt those. Those are his decisions,” she said.

She was warmer on the personal and political relationship. “I backed Andy in 2015 as well to be the leader of our party, and I’ve known him for more than a decade and a half, since before I became a member of parliament in 2010. So we’ve worked closely together, but particularly worked closely together the last two years.”

That history sits alongside a wider reshaping of the relationship between the centre and the regions that has been building for some time, with the Treasury and combined authorities edging closer together. Business has already seen that direction in moves such as Reeves’s plan to draw the National Wealth Fund and regional mayors into closer partnership on local growth.

Fiscal rules and the stability message

Mindful of an audience that prizes predictability, Reeves used the platform to reassure business that the incoming prime minister will not loosen the public finances. Burnham, she said, had been “really clear” in his commitment to the fiscal rules.

“That is a good thing because it means that businesses here can be confident that that stability, that rigour to policy-making, that tight grip on the public finances, which is essential for getting inflation and interest rates down, will be continued,” she said.

It is a message pitched squarely at a market still digesting the abrupt change at the top, a backdrop in which business leaders have urged an end to ‘drift and delay’ following Starmer’s exit.

North Sea reserves and energy security

Reeves also restated her support for making greater use of North Sea reserves. “I’ve been very clear that I think that the North Sea is a crucial asset for the UK and that oil and gas will be an important part of our energy mix for years to come,” she said. “And I’m very keen to make sure that we use that resource to ensure our energy security.”

The chancellor spoke ahead of an address by Andy Haldane, the BCC’s president and a former chief economist at the Bank of England, whom Burnham has been consulting as he assembles his policy platform. Senior figures from the other main parties were also due to take the stage, underlining how far the conference has become a staging post for a political contest that businesses will be watching with unusual intensity.

Britain’s beleaguered car industry has eked out its first monthly increase of the year, a flicker of momentum that the trade body warns could just as easily be snuffed out by stubbornly high energy costs and a fractious global trade picture.

Factories rolled 49,200 vehicles off their lines in May, up 2.3 per cent on the same month a year earlier, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. It is a modest figure by historical standards, but a welcome one after a run of declines that had become wearily familiar to anyone watching the sector.

The catch, and there is always a catch, is that the year-to-date numbers remain firmly in the red. UK plants have produced 306,000 cars in the first five months of 2026, down 4.1 per cent on the same period last year. May’s bounce, in other words, has trimmed the deficit rather than erased it.

Some of the month’s improvement is a quirk of the calendar. This time last year, Jaguar Land Rover, the Solihull-based maker of the Range Rover, paused shipments to the United States after President Trump slapped fresh tariffs on British exports. Set against that depressed base, almost any number was going to look better. The plants behind the figures read like a roll-call of what remains of British volume manufacturing: Nissan in Sunderland, JLR in Solihull and BMW’s Mini factory in Oxford.

It is worth holding May’s number up against the longer arc of decline. In 2016, when the country voted to leave the European Union, Britain was assembling more than 1.7 million cars a year. The current rolling 12-month average sits at 704,000, less than half that. The slump has been a long time in the making, and a single good month does not reverse it.

If the car numbers are sobering, the commercial vehicle figures are grim. UK factories built 11,500 vans in the year to date, a fall of 60 per cent year-on-year. On a rolling 12-month basis the total stands at 30,000, less than a quarter of what the country was turning out just two years ago.

The collapse follows Stellantis’s decision to shut its historic Luton van plant and convert Ellesmere Port into a low-volume electric van operation. The owner of Vauxhall has, in effect, taken a large slice of British van-making capacity off the board, and the data now reflects it. The country’s output recently slid to its lowest level in decades, a reminder of how quickly industrial capacity can erode once the investment case weakens.

The SMMT, which compiles the figures, is blunt about the causes: punishing energy costs, the unpredictability of international trade, particularly with the United States, and a domestic market that remains soft.

“May’s growth is welcome, and the priority must be to turn this into a sustained recovery by making the UK more competitive as a place to make and sell vehicles,” said Mike Hawes, the society’s chief executive.

He also pointed to a threat on the horizon. New EU trade barriers due next year could shut British automotive firms out of European supply chains if their products or components are deemed to be manufactured outside the bloc, a technicality with potentially expensive consequences for an industry that sends most of its output across the Channel. The full breakdown sits in the SMMT’s vehicle manufacturing data, and the message running through it is consistent: the firms that survived the long contraction are doing so on the finest of margins.

For now, the industry will take the win. A single month of growth is not a recovery, but after a year that has tested the sector’s resilience to the limit, it is at least a reason to look up. Whether it becomes the start of something more durable depends less on the factories themselves than on the cost of the electricity that powers them and the trade rules that govern where their cars can go, themes the government set out to address in its advanced manufacturing plan.