Business & Technology
HM Treasury warns of retail resilience confidence gap
HM Treasury has published research on operational resilience in retail and hospitality, highlighting a gap between boardroom confidence and expectations of rising disruption.
The survey of 101 senior leaders in UK consumer-facing businesses was conducted with FreedomPay and Retail Economics. It found that 81% of respondents believe their organisation’s investment in resilience is broadly sufficient, even though 60% expect operational disruption to increase over the next three years.
The data focuses on businesses in retail, leisure and hospitality, where payment systems and customer-facing operations are directly exposed to outages. The report warns that this mismatch between confidence and risk expectations could leave companies vulnerable if cyber incidents, geopolitical shocks or systems failures interrupt trade.
Cyber attack was cited by 51% of leaders as a top risk shaping resilience strategy over the next three years, making it the most frequently named threat in the research. Geopolitical instability followed at 42%, while 82% said global political developments had already increased their focus on resilience.
The findings also suggest senior management is not uniformly convinced that resilience spending delivers wider commercial value. Nearly half of respondents, 48%, said executives in their industry think too much is already being spent on resilience, while 45% said executives do not fully appreciate its value.
Confidence gap
A smaller but significant share of leaders acknowledged gaps in current spending. Seventeen per cent said their organisation’s investment in resilience was insufficient.
That figure rose sharply among larger businesses. A third of large companies said investment was insufficient, compared with 15% of small businesses and 14% of medium-sized firms.
The results suggest larger organisations may have a clearer view of exposure across complex systems, supply chains and customer operations. At the same time, 67% of respondents said it is easy to secure board backing for resilience spending, indicating that access to budget may be less of a barrier than how directors judge the return on that spending.
Another measure in the research underlines that tension. Sixty-four per cent agreed that resilience investment reduces risk but delivers limited additional business benefit.
That view is significant in sectors where the commercial impact of an outage can be immediate. If payment systems fail, shops, restaurants and leisure venues can lose the ability to process transactions even when physical sites remain open.
Board priorities
The report argues that resilience is still often seen as a defensive cost rather than a core part of daily operations. In practice, that can make it harder for management teams to justify spending on systems designed to prevent events that may never visibly occur.
For boards, the challenge is compounded by the nature of resilience itself. Successful investment often means avoiding disruption rather than creating a visible new asset, making it harder to measure in conventional financial terms.
The research comes as the government has set out an economic agenda focused on stability after a prolonged period of political turnover. In that context, the findings raise questions about whether private sector businesses are placing enough weight on the systems that allow them to keep trading during disruption.
Retail and hospitality groups are particularly exposed because customer transactions sit at the centre of daily revenue. A payment outage, even if short-lived, can stop trade, affect consumer confidence and delay recovery if businesses cannot restore systems quickly.
The survey suggests many leaders already expect recovery times to lengthen in the coming years. That sits uneasily alongside the majority view that existing resilience investment is sufficient.
Sector exposure
The sample covered senior decision-makers with direct responsibility for risk management or membership of risk and audit committees in businesses with turnover above GBP £6 million. That means the findings reflect the views of executives responsible for assessing operational threats rather than a wider cross-section of employees.
Even so, the numbers point to a common concern across customer-facing sectors: threats are rising, but many boards remain comfortable with current levels of preparation. The result is a planning contradiction in which companies predict greater disruption while still judging present safeguards to be adequate.
Kevin Carson, senior vice president at FreedomPay, commented on the findings.
“This research shows a clear disconnect between how prepared businesses believe they are and the reality of the risks they themselves are forecasting,” said Kevin Carson, senior vice president at FreedomPay.
“Resilience cannot be treated as a box-ticking exercise or a cost to be minimised. As the new government takes over plans for the UK economy, it must address the invisible vulnerabilities in our business infrastructure. Resilience must be built into the everyday running of a business, particularly at the point where a business interacts with customers and takes payment. That is often the first thing to fail during a disruption, and the first thing customers notice. Closing this confidence gap now, before the next shock arrives, should be a priority for every UK boardroom.”
Kingsbury Racing, based at the historic Bicester Motion site in Oxfordshire since 2015, now occupies the entirety of Building 99, the Grade II-listed Engine Fitting Shop.
The expansion will allow the company to broaden its services into post-war and post-classic competition cars, in addition to its renowned work on vintage Bentleys.
Lewis Fox, operations director, said: “The extra room allows us to continue specialising in vintage competition Bentleys and other pre-war cars, while expanding into post-war and post-classic race cars.
“This, coupled with my previous experience at the cutting edge of the racing world, allows us to come in line with the collections of some of our clients, whose own rosters span many decades of desirable cars.”
Kingsbury Racing plans to relocate its machine shop to a larger area within the expanded facility and has taken on two new staff members to support the growth.
Its existing workshop will remain focused on Bentley’s Continuation cars, in addition to restoration and maintenance work for private clients.
Dan Geoghegan, CEO of Bicester Motion, said: “Ewen and his team are a true success story not just of this site but of historic motoring; they have simply gone from strength to strength over the past decade.”
SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO
News Editor
Tem has appointed Claire Addison as Chief of Staff, following the electricity market technology company’s USD $75 million Series B round.
Addison joins from Flexitricity, where she spent seven years working on regulation, policy and market change. In her new role, she will lead Tem’s relationships with governments, regulators and industry bodies, oversee compliance with supply and regulatory requirements, and help guide the company’s entry into new markets.
Texas is the priority market in that international expansion. Tem has also been growing in the UK, where headcount has risen 75% this year.
Addison’s background centres on electricity market reform. At Flexitricity, she advised the UK Government, Ofgem, Elexon and NESO, and worked on changes aimed at widening market access for smaller participants. Before that, she spent five years at AES Corporation across global energy markets, including on early commercial battery storage systems on European and US grids.
Tem is trying to change how electricity is priced and contracted. Its Rosso platform is designed to replace a trading and transaction structure dating back to the 1980s that was adapted from oil and gas markets.
The group argues that the existing system relies on multiple intermediaries, each taking a margin and reducing price transparency for businesses and generators. Rosso, it says, prices and contracts electricity directly in the open and has so far returned more than USD $50 million in transaction fees to customers.
Tem has also facilitated more than 5TWh of energy transactions across more than 7,000 sites in the UK. Its customer list includes Boohoo Group, Newcastle United, Fever-Tree and Silverstone Circuit.
Policy focus
The appointment signals a stronger policy and regulatory focus as Tem expands. Energy market structure has become more politically sensitive as governments weigh industrial competitiveness, power system reform, and rising electricity demand tied to data centres and artificial intelligence.
For Tem, electricity pricing has become an economic issue beyond the energy sector. The way power is bought and sold affects manufacturing costs, industrial output and broader competitiveness, the company argues.
Addison set out her view of the market in two remarks.
“Since I first started my career in the energy sector, I’ve always been deeply frustrated that electricity is so complex and unnecessarily expensive. No matter what improvements are made, money always seems to flow to the same industry players. It’s not fair, and it’s a tax on ambition that undermines businesses and productivity,” said Claire Addison, Chief of Staff at Tem.
“When I met the team at Tem, it clicked instantly: here was a company building a fair and transparent replacement instead of benefiting from the status quo. I couldn’t be more excited to join at this moment in Tem’s journey. The infrastructure is proven, and my job now is to work with the people who write the market rules as the market catches up with what’s already possible,” Addison said.
Growth plans
Tem’s latest funding round was led by Lightspeed and, according to the company, was oversubscribed. The fresh capital will support its expansion in the UK and entry into overseas markets.
The company was founded after the energy crisis of 2021 and 2022. Its backers include AlbionVC, Atomico, the Branson family office, Hitachi Ventures, Revent VC, Schroders Capital and Voyager Ventures.
Joe McDonald, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, presented Addison’s appointment as part of that next phase. He pointed to the need for closer work with policymakers and regulators as Tem seeks a larger role in electricity market infrastructure.
“Only a handful of people in this country can say they’ve driven difficult, structural policy change through successive changes of government, and Claire is one of them. She joins at a point when it’s become clear that the electron, not the chip, is the constraint on the future. Tem removes that constraint, pricing the energy that’s fundamental to securing our future prosperity in the open. Claire will help put us in the right rooms as we scale, collaborating with policymakers and regulators to ensure that our infrastructure is understood by the market,” said McDonald.
The eatery, which is currently open seven days a week from 6am to 11pm, applied to stay open for 24 hours back in February.
The application, submitted to West Oxfordshire District Council, was approved by councillors yesterday with the provisions that is would only be for Drive-Thru and delivery applications.
This means the inside seated restaurant of the business will open and close with its usual hours.
Councillor David Edwards-Hughes confirmed the news, acknowledging the significant local interest the application has received.
READ MORE: David Cameron’s favourite Oxfordshire pub issues urgent plea
The Witney Town Councillor stated that the licensing panel retain the power to review the licence should any issues arise once these hours take effect.
He also encouraged residents to log any noise of disruption with WODC licensing.
Some residents welcomed the application however some said it encouraged people to eat more fast food.
Others also said that they would like to see improved litter picking in the area as various side roads are full of wrapping.
One woman said: “The hedgerows in the alley leading down to the Leys is full of discarded McDonald’s debris.”
In 2024 the branch reopened following a major refurbishment, which included a complete restaurant redesign.
Improvements included a front counter redesign making more space for customers to enjoy their meals, less congestion around touchscreens, and shorter queues.
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