Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 2 July 2026

• In June 2026, 31% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported concern about international conflict impacting supply chains over the next year, a continued fall from the recent peak this April (38%), but up 11 percentage points compared with June 2025; similarly, 22% were concerned about shipping disruption, down from April (25%), but up 10 percentage points compared with June 2025.

• Almost two-thirds (64%) of businesses reported some degree of concern about energy prices in late June 2026, broadly stable with early June; the accommodation and food service activities industry had the highest proportion of businesses expressing concern (88%), up 4 percentage points from late May 2026.

• Around two-thirds (68%) of businesses expressed some degree of concern about fuel prices in late June 2026, down 2 percentage points compared with early June; the transportation and storage industry reported the highest proportion of concern (86%).

• Nearly three in ten (29%) businesses reported using at least one type of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in June 2026, up 8 percentage points compared with June 2025, and continuing the upward trend over the last 3 years; for businesses with 250 or more employees, the proportion was higher at 49%, up 13 percentage points from a year ago.

• In June 2026, the AI technology that businesses had adopted the most was text generation using large language models (17%), followed by visual content creation (14%); these proportions are up 12 and 11 percentage points, respectively, since the question was introduced in September 2023.

• 32% of businesses reported some degree of concern over the impact climate change may have on their business, up 5 percentage points from March 2026.

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 159 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 15 to 28 June 2026.

This wave of the survey asked businesses questions about:

• supply chain resilience

• energy (gas and electricity) prices

• environmental issues, including concern about climate change

• artificial intelligence (AI) technologies

• impact of US tariffs

For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 15 to 28 June article.

Data reported within BICS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. Further information on quality is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI), and we regularly update confidence intervals associated with the survey questions.

Single-site weighted regional estimates up to Wave 154 are available in our Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy: May 2026 article.

The percentage of businesses that reported they were trading in late June 2026 was 95%, with 87% fully trading, and 8% partially trading (for example, trading with reduced hours or staff numbers). Meanwhile, 3% of businesses reported "temporarily paused trading", and 2% reported "permanently ceased trading" as their business's trading status.

Access to microdata

You can access the microdata for Waves 1 to 158 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) through the Secure Research Service (SRS). The BICS microdata for each wave are released on a rolling basis in the week following the publication of each wave. The microdata are made confidential and do not disclose information on any specific business.

Only researchers accredited under the Digital Economy Act, as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website are able to access data in the SRS. You can apply for researcher accreditation using the People and Projects Service (PPS). For more information, please see our guidance on how to become an accredited researcher.

To conduct analysis with microdata from the SRS, a project application must be submitted to the Research Accreditation Panel (RAP), as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website. Project accreditation applications should be submitted using the Project Accreditation Service for SRS (PASS). For more information, please see our guidance on applying for an accredited research project.

To use the SRS, you must access it through the appropriate safe setting. For more information on the full range of safe setting options, please see our guidance on accessing data securely.

Making our published spreadsheets accessible

Following the Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidance on releasing statistics in spreadsheets, we will be amending our published tables over the next couple of publications to improve the usability, accessibility and machine readability of our published statistics. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at bics@ons.gov.uk.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI, which was updated on 10 October 2024.

The BICS is voluntary, and the results are official statistics in development. More information is available in our Guide to official statistics in development.

The results are based on responses from the voluntary fortnightly BICS, which captures businesses' views on financial performance, workforce, prices, trade, and business resilience. The Wave 159 survey was live for the period 15 to 28 June 2026. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 15 to 28 June 2026 article.

Coverage

The BICS sampling frame is based on the same industries as our Monthly Business Survey (MBS). The MBS covers the UK for production industries only, and Great Britain for construction, retail and services industries. The MBS is an important input to the output measure of gross domestic product (GDP), which includes monthly GDP.

For detailed information on the industries covered by the MBS and BICS, see our GDP(o) data sources catalogue. The following are some industries that are excluded from MBS and BICS:

• agriculture

• oil and gas extraction

• energy generation and supply

• public administration and defence

• public provision of education and health

• finance and insurance

For more information on the methodology of producing the BICS, such as weighting, please see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI.

Strengths and limitations

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI.

Reporting unit

The reporting unit is the business unit to which questionnaires are sent. The response from the reporting unit can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.

Private sector businesses

The Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) is a survey of private sector businesses, meaning that the public sector is not sampled. Some businesses are also excluded; please see the Coverage subsection of this bulletin's Section 4: Data sources and quality for more information.

Trading businesses

Trading businesses refers to businesses that responded that their trading status was "currently fully trading" or "currently partially trading" only.

If trading businesses is not specifically specified, the statistics presented refer to businesses that have "Not permanently stopped trading". This includes trading businesses and those that said their trading status was "paused trading and intends to restart in the next two weeks" or "paused trading and does not intend to restart within the next two weeks".