Stronger Together’s first webinar of 2021 provided attendees with expert insight into the Chancellor’s recently announced Budget for 2021. Organised as part of the company’s ongoing support for the profession, the event featured talks from optometrist and businesses consultant Gavin Rebello, Hakim Group CEO Imran Hakim and behavioural economist Roger Martin-Fagg.
After a welcome from Rebello, Hakim utilised the webinar platform’s features to conduct a poll and asked how optimistic practitioners felt following the government’s announcement that lockdown restrictions would be lifted by June 21. The vast majority of attendees indicated that, out of 10, their confidence levels were at either eight or nine. Commenting on these results, Hakim said: ‘It’s clear that the overall sentiment right now is overwhelmingly positive and there’s a lot more confidence now than there was 12 months ago. It’s definitely been a very disruptive year, but the PM’s announcement of a timeline for opening up again has provided a lot of hope.’
Gavin Rebello
Building on the optimism across the webinar, Hakim shared that there had been a degree of recovery within his business: ‘In January we ended up at 80% of our revenue [compared to last year], but the range of revenue across stores varied, with some practices at 50% while some others were at 110%. Some practices are reporting record weeks, the best weeks in their history, but others are still struggling.’ Hakim explained this was down to a range of factors, including location in the north or south or in an urban or rural area, and emphasised he wanted stores to open up at their own pace with
a focus on safety for staff and patients.
Budget considerations
Opening the discussion on the recently announced Budget, Hakim said: ‘There were a lot of gives, but some delayed takes. Overall, I think it was a pretty painless Budget and rightly so because we’ve got a little way to go before we’re out of this challenging period.’
Hakim then passed the bat to Martin-Fagg, who provided what he called a ‘bigger picture context for the next three to four years, on the Budget. Martin-Fagg’s outlook on the economy was exceptionally positive and he predicted an economic boom once lockdown restrictions were lifted. ‘We all have every reason to be very optimistic,’ he said.
Providing good news for the business owners among the attendees, Martin-Fagg said: ‘Assuming the vaccines are still effective with new variants of Covid, there is going to be a significant surge in spending by the end of summer. It will be the start of an inflationary boom.’
Martin-Fagg also confirmed an observation made earlier by Hakim, who had noted that while customers were visiting stores less, they were spending more on single purchases. Martin-Fagg explained this phenomenon with reference to household wealth: ‘Wealth for 66% of households is rising by 7% and wages are rising by 2%. There is £150bn of wealth in households waiting to be spent.’
Capital gains tax and the opportunities it presented to business owners was another factor of the Budget that influenced Martin-Fagg’s rosy outlook. ‘Now is the time to re-equip your practice,’ he explained, ‘Take advantage of 130% capital allowance and the banks willing to lend at 2%.’ He added that staff may become more expensive in the near future and offered a recommendation that practices should consider an apprenticeship scheme to create skilled staff in practice.
Following attendee questions at the end of the webinar the hosts ran a final poll to measure whether levels of optimism had increased following the event, with the results showing that the analysis from the speakers had further increased already high levels of optimism.
As a closing statement, Martin-Fagg said: ‘Do enjoy the coming boom, because I have absolutely no doubt that it’s going to be a big one.’
- For a link to the webinar recording and related slides please contact lukewren@hakimgroup.co.uk