One third of firms in the food or hotel sector have little or no confidence they will survive next three months, according to figures released this morning by the Ofice for National Statistics.
Their latest report on the impact of Coronavirus on business found that the sector had the lowest percentage of businesses currently trading, at 75%, compared with 85% across all industries and the highest percentage of businesses with no cash reserves, at 6%, compared with 3% across all industries.
The data was collected over the period 19 October to 1 November 2020 and refer to the period 5 to 18 October 2020.
The arts, entertainment and recreation industry had the highest percentage of businesses that were temporarily closed or paused trading, at 22%.Only 4.6% said they had low confidence that they would survive the next three months, and 4% said they had no confidence.
But 34.9% of them said they were not sure. No other sector of the economy recorded anything like this level of uncertainty
