Impacts of Brexit on small business

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In this issue of GEOGRAPHY REVIEW, Sarah Hall writes about the impact of the UK exiting the EU on the City of London. One mistake that students often make in planning an NEA is to want to understand the impact of a change that is about to happen, for example, ‘What will be the impact of a new shopping centre on my city?’. This is hard to do because you cannot collect empirical data on the future. Brexit, on the other hand, started in 2016 with the referendum result, and impacts have been accumulating, particularly since the UK left the EU in January 2020. Almost all of the controls on movement of people, goods and services between the EU and the UK have now been implemented. Now is therefore a good time to be thinking about impacts.

Sarah Hall writes about the City of London, but the economic and social impacts of Brexit are felt at all scales, from international finance to your local deli (recent changes will make importing foodstuffs from the EU very expensive for small businesses). Similarly, many businesses have been hit by shortages of labour caused by limitations on movement of workers from the EU. Eight years on from the referendum result and 4 years after leaving the EU, you would be well placed to collect data on economic and social change over this period linked to one of the most dramatic geopolitical, social and economic changes to impact the UK this century. The data you collect could be qualitative (interviewing local businesses) or quantitative (councils or local chambers of commerce may hold data on economic activity or confidence). A good source of relatively local economic data is the local indicators section of the ONS website (www.tinyurl.com/msc63jjt). Remember, though, that in the time period we are considering you will also see Covid-19 effects, and you will need to take these into account. There will be a geography to these changes — who is affected, where and how?