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Introduction

Real Estate, Renting and Business Activities (or "Business Services" for short) is largely an office-based white-collar sector encompassing many professional, engineering and scientific occupations but also includes lower value added blue collar activities like industrial cleaning, security activities and contract packaging. The sector encompasses the technical, professional and operational services generally supplied to firms and government rather than to households, for the support of their production processes or their organisation and used to improve their efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. The range of activities undertaken is very wide and because of diversification, the traditional boundaries that characterised sub-sectors have become blurred, but include such services as:

• Real estate activities
• Renting of machinery and equipment
• Computer and related activities
• Research and development
• Legal services
• Accountancy, auditing and tax advice services
• Business and management consultancy
• Market research and public opinion polling
• Architectural and engineering activities and related technical consultancy
• Technical testing and analysis
• Advertising and publicity
• Labour recruitment and provision of personnel
• Investigation and security activities
• Cleaning and maintenance services
• Photographic activities
• Packaging activities
• Call centre activities
• Secretarial and translation services

Employment

Providing nearly 69,500 employee jobs in 2005, business service activities are today a very important constituent of the Lancashire economy. However, accounting for 11.6% of the total local employee workforce they remain considerably "under-represented" compared with their 16.8% share in Great Britain or 14.5% share across the North West. By value of its output, business services is the second largest broad sector in Lancashire behind manufacturing, contributing about 16% of Lancashire's annual wealth creation (GVA); this compares with a 26.5% share in the UK at large. Given their generally high value added nature and increasing importance within the wider economy this arguably represents a major local structural weakness.

There are broadly comparable numbers of male and female employees in the Lancashire sector though there does remain a clear difference in work status: more than 84% 0f male employees work on a full-time basis compared with 58% of female employees. Over recent years the incidence of full-time working in the sector has increased at a much more rapid pace than part-time working and today about 71% of the jobs are full-time; women hold nearly three-quarters of the part-time jobs (Table 1).

Figure 1 Business Services Employment by District, 2005

Source ONS - Annual Business Inquiry

Business Services employment is spread widely across the county though the Central Lancashire area has by far the largest concentration with more than a fifth of all the sector's jobs based in Preston alone, reflecting the district's importance as a sub-regional administrative and commercial centre. Preston together with Chorley (which has more than 22% of its total employee jobs in the sector) are the only Lancashire districts to have a share of business service jobs above the national average. At the other extreme, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Ribble Valley are markedly under-represented in the sector with local job shares in Business Services of less than half that in Great Britain (Figure 1).

Because of low entry barriers and relatively high business formation rates across many business services the industry in general has a highly fragmented structure and most sub-sectors are characterised by intense competition and specialisation. The majority of the 12,900 business units in Lancashire comprise fairly small enterprises: 97% employ fewer than 25 people. There are many one-person enterprises and the "typical" business employs just five people. However, there are also a number of more substantial businesses with an estimated 95 business units employing in excess of 100 people and which between them account for over a third of the sector's employee workforce (Table 2).

Figure 2 Business Services Employee Jobs, Lancashire, 1950-2005

Source Ministry of Labour/ONS - ERII Employment Records

In terms of headcounts small companies or establishments dominate most parts of the Business Services sector. The main sectors in which much larger companies are to be found include computer services (e.g. Siemens Business Services, Electronic Data Systems, CSS Computer Services, Capita Business Services); employment agencies (e.g. Adecco, Premier Employment Group, Manpower, Brook Street UK); call centre activities (e.g. Littlewoods Group, Homeserves Claims Management, Carphone Warehouse); and industrial/contract cleaning (e.g. Mitie Management Services, Rentokil Initial Services, Cleanall Services, Cleanbright Services).

Employment and Business Trends

From a base of about 4,000 employee jobs in 1950, Business Services employment in Lancashire grew slowly but steadily over early post-war years to about 16,000 at the start of the 1980s (Figure 2). Growth accelerated sharply over the 1980s when most activities retained a high job recruitment profile. Some over-capacity arising from this expansion, particularly in the more consumer-related sectors, was weeded out over the early 1990s downturn but thereafter growth has been extremely buoyant with the sector having undoubtedly been one of the star performers in terms of new job creation. Classification and methodological changes in the data obscure some trends and may slightly over-estimate growth rates but over the past 25 years the sector is estimated to have created close to 52,000 net new jobs – a three-fold increase.

Exceptional growth has been recorded in most sub-sectors but of particular note have been job gains in computer services (particularly in software consultancy and supply and data processing activities), business and management consultancy, employment & recruitment agencies, the letting of property, legal and accountancy activities, investigation and security and a range of miscellaneous business activities from call centres and speciality design services to exhibition and fair organisers and credit agencies, etc. The only significant sub-sector to have negligible change in the number of jobs was research and development activities.

Figure 3 Change in VAT-Registered Business Services Firms, 1994-2006

Source Small Business Service - VAT Registrations and De-registrations

This high growth profile has also been apparent in the increase in the stock of businesses registered for VAT. Between 1994 and 2006 the number of VAT-registered businesses in the Lancashire Business Services sector enjoyed uninterrupted growth, increasing by nearly 4,300 or 90% - a pace of growth that even exceeded the UK average (+76% for this sector (Figure 3)). However, as in the case of jobs, the Business Services share of the local business stock (23% in 2006) still remained well below that of the UK (30%). Because of the demand for business services and relatively low entry barriers, Business Services have a high company birth rate compared to the national all-industry average of 10.3%. This rate – the number of newly started companies measured annually divided by the number of existing companies, averaged 15.1% in Lancashire between 1994-2006, fractionally higher than the national average (14.1%) and it was the highest formation rate of any branch of industry. The business survival rate (measured according to the number of businesses still trading after one year) at 90.4% 1994-06 was fractionally below the UK average of 90.7%.

Viewed in terms of "business units", which include firms not separately registered for VAT and/or below the VAT registration threshold, the total Business Services stock in Lancashire increased by some 5,200 units between 1998-2005 (+68%). A sizeable net increase was apparent across all the principal sectors of the industry (Table 4a). A more detailed perspective of trends in the numbers of business units at the activity heading level is given in Table 4b.

General Characteristics

The Business Services sector is comprised of a wide array of services sold mainly to other businesses (although in reality many of its constituent activities can also be provided to private households as well). Such services are essentially intermediate activities, providing inputs for the production of goods or other services rather than directly serving final consumers. Nationally it is today a hugely important segment of the economy employing about 4.8m people and with annual turnover of some £338bn. In nominal terms, gross value added in the sector in 2005, at £175bn was more than two and-a-half times that as recent as 1995 indicating an extraordinarily buoyant rate of growth easily outpacing that of the wider economy. Indeed, in terms of its wealth creation, the overall Business Services sector is today more important to the UK economy than manufacturing industry. However, the importance of business services in the economy is not just derived from the direct wealth that they generate and the employment they provide, but also from the facilitating role they provide to other sectors. As such, they impact on the competitiveness of the economy as a whole.

Preston Business Centre, Fulwood, Preston

Technological developments, competitive pressures and the increasing sophistication in the way that both companies and government operate are the main drivers behind the expanding demand for business services. They have benefited from the growth in new areas of technology like communications and information technology (which themselves have facilitated the development and adoption of new market services), from the introduction of important innovations in service management, from the ever more complicated operational and regulatory environment and, in particular, from the increased tendency of manufacturers and other service industry providers to out-source many in-house services and non-core activities, from legal, information technology and sales functions to cleaning, security and recruitment and to use professional consultants and specialist providers instead.

In effect, a large slice of the "new" jobs created in Business Services, particularly over the 1980s and early 1990s represented a transfer of jobs from a manufacturing or "public activity" classification rather than the creation of jobs per se. The process was boosted by both private sector companies shedding activities as a quick fix for an immediate problem or a simple cost-cutting exercise and in the public sector by government requirements on local authorities and the National Health Service to market-test certain services. Usually the first to go were the unglamorous blue-collar activities of cleaning, catering and security. Increasingly, however, out-sourcing has become more sophisticated and a new wave of contracts has come to the fore as companies have out-sourced white collar operations such as payrolls, pensions, administration, information technology and call centres. The aim of these has been more directly to achieve competitive advantage by allowing an even stronger focus on core business competencies whilst developing strategic partnerships with suppliers. This latter tendency has been an important generator of new company formation in the sub-region as well as attracting inward investment by companies specifically to service the needs of large company out-sourcing requirements.

The overall growth of the Business Services sector is related to the wider economy in general though appears to be less vulnerable to economic downturn than services as a whole. Indeed, some business service activities even appear to have counter-cyclical characteristics as during downturns larger companies often tend to contract out more business to reduce overheads and costs. Continuing to be powered by greater awareness of the benefits from increased externalisation of functions and by the ever-increasing importance of knowledge and information in production, future prospects for Business Services appear rosy. However, given the volume of activity that has already been outsourced it is unlikely that they will be able to continue to sustain the exceptionally high growth rates of the recent past.

For further details, please contact:
Peter Kivell
Tel 01772 534157
Email Peter.Kivell@lancashire.gov.uk