Brexit: tech firms start moving investment from UK

My piece for The Register on early reactions to Brexit and Theresa May’s new government, based on interviews with 10 companies, finds that a few have already decided to move new investment away from the UK. Nothing major, and none talked about shifting existing work from Britain; but there is a lot of worry about the supply of European techies being closed off.

Adam Hale, chief executive of Fairsail, says: “If we can’t hire the right number of people, or it becomes harder to hire EU nationals, our only alternative will be to offshore some or significant amounts of development.” On a more personal level, some people who run start-ups are thinking about whether they belong elsewhere. Daniel Rovira, a London-based Swedish national who runs Itcher, is thinking about Barcelona: “You feel a little bit not wanted in a country you came to think of as your home,” he says of Britain.

It’s unlikely that tech jobs will move quickly; the consensus from interviewees was to wait and see what the Brexit deal will look like before taking big decisions. But if the UK was to place significant limits on skilled immigration, then it would look almost inevitable that some of these companies and some of this work would go elsewhere. The full article is here.

In another recent article (that has nothing to do with Brexit): why South Staffordshire and Shropshire healthcare NHS foundation trust has got into the public library business, running eight libraries in Staffordshire including in Barton-under-Needwood.