Local Roads Cause Biggest Problem for UK Businesses in Snow, Sky News Poll Reveals

An exclusive Sky News poll, conducted in association with the British Chambers of Commerce for tonight’s Jeff Randall Live programme, has found that the state of local roads across Britain has had the biggest impact on UK businesses during the ‘big freeze’.

The poll of 200 businesses from locations throughout the UK, carried out today (06 Jan 2010), found 74% of businesses have reported problems as a result of the current weather conditions.  By far the biggest problem was due to local roads, with 68% answering that problems on local roads had affected them during the snow. Other problems affecting their businesses were ‘motorway and main road clearance’, with 12% reporting that had had an impact. ‘Maintaining rail and public transport services’ had the next biggest impact at 10%. ‘Pavements and town centres’ came in fourth at 8% and problems at airports affected only 2% of businesses polled.

50% of businesses reported a rise in absenteeism.  Most of the absenteeism was on a fairly small scale with 61% of those businesses experiencing missing staff, reporting that it was at a level of between 1-9% of their workforce. However 8% of businesses experiencing absenteeism have had between 90-100% of their staff missing from duty during the adverse weather.

Jeff Randall will be interviewing Steve Hughes, an economist with the British Chamber of Commerce on Jeff Randall Live this evening to talk through the results.