JetSpace

07/09/2026

Reports suggest that 58% of home business owners feel their work has taken over their home.

The boundaries are fraying elsewhere too. Some 55% regularly work evenings and weekends, whilst 48% report loneliness or isolation. One in three have even had customers arrive at their home unannounced!

Flexibility starts to look rather less appealing when your front door doubles as reception and switching off becomes a nightly negotiation.

https://startups.co.uk/news/home-business-owners-feel-like-work-has-taken-over/

So what can you do about it?

Habits help, but there's only so much a tidy desk and a firm finish time can do. A separate workplace creates a physical boundary between running the business and living with it. It can also provide you with company, privacy and somewhere professional to meet clients, partners and customers.

This doesn't have to mean committing to a long lease or abandoning flexible working. For a small team or solo founder, a serviced office can offer the structure of a workplace without the property admin. You arrive, work and leave. Crucially, the work stays behind.

If your business has annexed the kitchen, spare room and your evenings, could a flexible office in Brighton or Shoreham help you reclaim home?

04/09/2026

New figures reported by Startups.co.uk show that 99% of large UK companies have a website, compared with only 74% of micro-businesses and 65% of sole traders.

This matters because customers don't treat missing or outdated information as a minor inconvenience. BrightLocal research cited in the story found that 62% of consumers would avoid a business if its online information was incorrect. Meanwhile, 66% use Google to check a local firm, ahead of Google Maps and a company's own website.

For a small business, that makes accurate opening hours, contact details and location information part of the customer experience. You can do brilliant work and still lose an enquiry before anyone picks up the phone.

https://startups.co.uk/news/can-your-customers-actually-find-you-online/

Local visibility doesn't require a large marketing department. It does require consistency. Your website, Google listing and business directories should all tell customers the same clear story about who you are, what you do and where they can find you.

A credible business address can help too, particularly when you're moving beyond the kitchen-table stage or want clients to know you're properly established in Sussex.

Start with a fully filled out Google business profile if you don't already have one. It's the first place buyers will surface you online.

01/09/2026

National business confidence just hit a four-month high.

For Sussex small businesses, the picture is more complicated.

The latest FSB Small Business Index put confidence at -71: the lowest reading since 2020. Private SME confidence fell from +2.1 to -16.1 in a single quarter, the sharpest drop of any business segment measured.

Meanwhile:

→ 64% of small firms cite tax as their #1 cost pressure
→ 97% say employment taxes affect hiring decisions
→ Late payment now shapes how 72% of SMEs operate
→ In Brighton & Hove, 90.1% of enterprises are micro-businesses

It's a two-speed recovery. National headlines brighten, but plenty of owner-managed firms haven't felt it yet.

Here's what the latest FSB, Lloyds and SME data actually says about confidence, costs and growth in Sussex plus five practical moves worth making while conditions stay tight:

https://www.jetspace.work/state-of-sussex-small-business-2026

What the Latest FSB Data Says About Confidence, Costs and Growth Business confidence is rising, apparently. For Sussex small businesses in 2026, the reality is rather more complicated. The national headlines offer genuine encouragement. UK business confidence climbed five points to +49 in July, reac...

28/08/2026

Did you know TikTok Shop has passed 300,000 UK small business sellers, with new seller sign-ups up 200% year-on-year.

Live shopping sales are up 55% year-on-year, with more than 6,000 live broadcasts running every day in the UK.

https://startups.co.uk/news/tiktok-shop-reaches-300000-sellers

The platform's so-called "halo effect" is driving growth off-platform too: TikTok says traction on the app is spilling over into branded search, wholesale partnerships and even physical retail listings.

Trades businesses are among the surprise winners. Wolverhampton butcher Manny Malik sold £8,000 of meat in a three-hour TikTok Live, business that would normally take three or four days in his high street shop.

One of those 300,000 sellers is probably working from a spare room in Brighton, Hove or Shoreham right now. Social commerce isn't a niche any more. It's the mainstream for SME retail, and the businesses doing it well aren't the glossy brands. They're the trades, the independents, the people with something real to sell and a phone camera to do it with.

The other side of the story is less photogenic: packing, shipping, returns, customer service, and somewhere quiet to do a three-hour live without the dog barking. We're not suggesting sellers all need a glamorous studio, just a reliable space where the Wi-Fi works and the post office isn't a 40-minute walk.

25/08/2026

Can small firms actually win valuable government contracts?

New guidance means that from January 2027, social value weighting doubles from 10% to 20% for public sector contracts over £5m. Companies bidding for government work will be judged on local skills, apprenticeships and work placements. Red tape is being stripped out to make bidding simpler for SMEs. The combined procurement pot is £90bn a year.

https://www.enterprisenation.com/learn-something/governments-90bn-shake-up-to-boost-small-firms

The message from Whitehall is clear: they want smaller suppliers at the table. But wanting SMEs involved and making it genuinely accessible are two different things. Small firms still need credibility to compete: a professional address, meeting space for client visits and a setup that passes procurement due diligence without looking like someone's spare room.

You can probably tell where we're going with this.

Winning government contracts requires more than a good bid. You need to look the part. A serviced office in Brighton's city centre gives you a real business address, meeting rooms for evaluator visits and a postcode that doesn't raise eyebrows during due diligence.

You don't need a glass tower in the City. You need a base that says you're established, professional and here to stay. £90bn is real money, and for the first time, the rules are being rewritten in favour of the firms that have been locked out. Make sure your workspace isn't what holds you back.

jetspace.work

20/08/2026

New analysis from AI training company QA suggests 97% of UK organisations report at least one significant AI skills gap.

https://smallbusiness.co.uk/uk-sectors-split-as-ai-adoption-races-ahead-of-workforce-readiness/

The sector split is stark. Technology and financial services lead adoption, but in healthcare, 73% of frontline clinicians have never used AI in their own work, with fear of clinical error the leading barrier. In manufacturing, over 40% of AI deployments are aimed at plugging skills and labour gaps rather than improving efficiency.

The AI skills gap isn't really a tech problem. It's a learning problem, and learning happens in rooms, with people, around shared screens. We've watched Sussex SMEs try to bridge exactly this gap in coffee shops, over Zoom and in spare rooms. It mostly doesn't stick.

The businesses getting ahead of AI right now aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones giving their teams space to learn, experiment and ask silly questions without judgement. A flexible workspace with decent meeting rooms and a quiet corner for an AI workshop beats a £10,000 software licence every time, because the tool only matters if your people can use it.

17/08/2026

Walk into almost any office and you'll find four generations sharing the same space.

A colleague shows someone a useful new shortcut. Ten minutes later, the lesson runs the other way on a tricky client call. It's now the norm: 73% of British senior business leaders manage a multigenerational workforce.

But only 21% of employers train line managers to support it. That's where the friction shows up:

→ Channels clash: Slack vs email vs a tap on the shoulder
→ Feedback lands differently across careers
→ Hybrid quickly feels unfair if it becomes a perk for one age group
→ Mentoring works best when it runs both ways

People want the same things across every age group. Career development. Flexibility. Balance. Belonging. Shared values. They just ask for them differently.

Read our guide on what Sussex SMEs can do to make a mixed-age team actually work - five practical changes that don't need a new HR department or a fresh policy for every birthday.

https://www.jetspace.work/four-generations-one-office-making-a-multigenerational-team-work

FutureOfWork

Walk into almost any Sussex office and you’ll find people at very different stages of their working lives sharing the same space. One colleague might be showing someone a useful new shortcut. Ten minutes later, the lesson may run the other way when a difficult client call needs a steadier hand. Th...

13/08/2026

Could the self-employed be facing monthly tax bills instead of annual payments?

The government and HMRC are consulting on plans to make the self-employed and landlords pay tax monthly rather than through annual self-assessment, with implementation likely from April 2030.

As 1.1 million payments on account were missed in January 2025 alone, and three-quarters of those became collectable HMRC debt, there's a strong argument to move to monthly billing.

Monthly liability would be forecast from your previous year's return, bringing the UK in line with Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the US.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/smallbusiness/article-15975793/Self-employed-landlords-forced-pay-tax-bills-monthly-Labour-HMRC-mull-radical-regime-change.html

April 2030 might sound a long way off, but the underlying pressure is already here. Cash flow discipline matters more for the self-employed than almost anyone else in business. Monthly tax liability, forecast off last year's income, means fluctuating months hit harder if you haven't built in a buffer. That's exactly why we see so many freelancers and sole traders choosing flexible space over a long lease: no five-year commitment sitting on top of an already unpredictable income.

If you're self-employed and running your business from home right now, this is a good moment to think about what other fixed costs you could make more flexible before HMRC does it for you.

10/08/2026

Sussex Innovation has put together a curated list of seven business support organisations for tech founders across East and West Sussex:

https://www.sussexinnovation.co.uk/news-resources/business-support-in-sussex-and-the-south-east-7-resources-every-tech-founder-should-know-in-2026

The line-up ranges from BIPC Brighton's IP and market research tools to Silicon Brighton's community meetups, TechNative Digital's talent pipeline and the University of Sussex's commercial collaboration programmes. As the report puts it, the challenge in Sussex was never finding help. It was knowing where to start.

Support networks, funding routes and mentor introductions are brilliant, but at some point you still need a desk, a meeting room for that investor call and a proper address that isn't your spare bedroom. Consider jetspace.work the unofficial eighth resource on that list.

If you're already plugged into Sussex Innovation, BIPC Brighton or Silicon Brighton, you're closer to a home in Brighton or Shoreham than you might think.

06/08/2026

Could your office be making good work harder?

Flickering lights, constant background noise and nowhere quiet to focus can create genuine barriers for neurodivergent colleagues. They can also make the working day more difficult for everyone else.

The good news is that improving your workplace doesn’t necessarily require an expensive redesign. Our latest guide covers five practical changes SMEs can make now, from providing more control over lighting to creating quieter spaces for focused work.

Read the full guide: https://www.jetspace.work/is-your-office-working-against-neurodivergent-colleagues