LANCASHIRE BUSINESS DAY
▸ Feature in the next issue of Lancashire
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PRESENT:
Richard Slater, Lancashire Business View (Chair) Lucia Arnone, Vital Synergy Helen Binns, Beever & Struthers part of Menzies LLP Andrew Dewhurst, East Lancashire Learning Group David Dunwell, Lancashire Mind Shelley Magee, Smokefree Lancashire Dave Walker, +24 Emma Walton, Lancashire Youth Zones
TIME FOR REFLECTION
We brought leaders from a wide-range of sectors together for our Lancashire Business Day conversation and asked them to reflect on 2025 and look ahead to what the next 12 months has in store
How have you had to show resilience and tenacity over the past 12 months?
EW: For the charity sector, 2025 has probably been the year we’ve had to be the most resilient ever. Charities were not exempt from the employers’ national insurance rise, so we were on the back foot from the beginning. Blackburn Youth Zone alone had to raise an extra £100,000. We just had to knuckle down and get on with it.
Alongside that, you only have to turn on the news to see how young people are struggling more than ever and how they need us more than ever. The impact of Covid has not gone away and the overall umbrella organisation that sits over Youth Zones commissioned a survey that shows young people are turning to AI as a friend and as company, because they’ve got nowhere to go.
They are stuck at home. They’re in their bedrooms and are having to give up extra leisure activities because parents can’t afford it anymore.
The funding landscape has just been really difficult in 2025. The increased demand on traditional funding streams such as grants and trusts is getting higher and higher every year.
We are incredibly lucky to have huge business networks that support the Youth Zones. We can’t run without the support they give us.
been withholding spend. Marketing budgets have been cut.
The national insurance increase was massive for us. Not because of our own costs, we have a small number of staff, but a lot of our clients have hundreds or even thousands of employees. Their budgets were strained, and
It has been an interesting year, the economy
has stuttered and businesses have been withholding spend. Marketing budgets have been cut
The Youth Zones in Lancashire are coming under one umbrella. To do that when they’ve got their own cultures, their own processes, their own systems, has meant everyone across the board has had to be really resilient and tenacious.
DW: It has been an interesting year, the economy has stuttered and businesses have
that has been passed down to suppliers like us. It has been a year to be tenacious.
Because we have created genuine transformation growth for a lot of our clients they did stick with us. We learned that we are really good at what we do and sometimes you forget that.
Continued on Page 64 LANCASHIREBUSINES SV
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