Confidence amongst small businesses in Yorkshire, the Humber & North East is now negative, contrasting with the positive results seen in the earlier quarters of 2021. Whilst this remains above the level of confidence seen through 2020 (-51% average across the year), the decline from Q3 2021 to Q4 is likely in part due to uncertainty caused by increasing levels of the Omicron variant.
Looking at the rest of the UK more broadly, small businesses in this region display confidence well below the UK average (-8%). The regions which score more poorly are South West (-22%) and the North East by itself (-64%). For context, Yorkshire and the Humber on its own sits at 3%.