Almost one third of northern businesses could go bust - university research

Durham University Business School says decimated supply chains have hit companies hard

Almost one third of businesses in the Midlands and Northern England could go bust as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to research from Durham University Business School.

The institution said that hundreds of thousands of businesses are not set up to see their supply chains decimated in such a way.

The university said that it assessed over 1.7 million companies in 99 sectors, across 29 geographic regions, finding that 29 per cent are at a "high risk" of collapse.

Professor Kiran Fernandes said: "Most companies in our region had never experienced such an external shock and therefore were not prepared with mitigation strategies for their complex global supply chains.

"Analysing a large number of companies using a big data approach has allowed us to better understand supply chain configurations and more importantly allowed us to identify and suggest mitigation strategies that can be adopted by supply chains across all a large number of sectors."

The university said that around 35 per cent of businesses surveyed were at a low or medium risk of folding, as COVID-19 continues to sweep across the country.

Sectors likely to be hit hardest include: real estate; food and beverage; personal services; and construction.

Those likely to fare better, the university said, include: computer programming; management consulting; architectural; and parts of the retail food space.