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Overview of the Politics Sector

The United Kingdom has a long history as a major protagonist in international affairs and politics. The UK remains a significant political, economic, cultural and military influence around the world. Having started the twentieth century with a commanding global empire, the UK has had to redefine its position in the world in the light of an ever changing political landscape.

Changes in legislation, new political leadership and policies, cuts in spending or new investments, as well as external socio-economic influences all effect the ways in which individuals, businesses and organisations work within society. Each must continuously adapt to the evolving political environment, making the most of new opportunities and working within a context of practicable constraints. 

Overview of the Property Sector

The UK property sector requires a variety of skills, involved in all aspects of property across commercial, industrial, residential and agricultural sectors. The property industry is a diverse sector employing individuals across a range of sub-sectors including architecture, surveying, facilities management, planning, engineering, environment, development & management, investment, lettings & sales. According to Open University, there are approximately 360,000 people employed in the UK property and housing sectors working in over 105,000 organisations.

According to the IPF Size and Structure of UK Property Market, the total value of UK commercial property, which covers the three main sectors of retail, offices and industrials along with hotels, pubs and restaurants, leisure and miscellaneous types was estimated at £647bn in mid-2013. These sectors generate £50bn of rental income on an average yield of 7.8%. By value, 45% of this property is retail including pubs and restaurants, 28% is offices, whilst 18% and almost 9% respectively are industrial and ‘other commercial’. London now accounts for a little over a third of total value.

The total value of the UK’s residential stock is estimated to be £4,615bn (2013), seven times the size of the commercial property value. Almost all of this is privately owned, mainly by owner-occupiers but including about £837bn in the private rented sector. Housing associations, local and central government and their agencies account for about only £200bn of residential property value.

Overview of the Public Sector

The UK public sector is a major component of the total UK economy. According to Open University research, public expenditure in 2008/09 amounted to £618bn and constituted 48% of GDP. The public sector employs just under 6 million personnel (approx. 19% of total UK workforce) and is responsible for the delivery of a wide range of public services including: pensions and benefits (28%), health (18%), emergency services, law enforcement, and education (13%).

According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), the UK voluntary sector contributes £11.7 billion to the UK economy, and employs approximately 765,000 (2.7%) of the total 27.9million UK workforce. 

Overview of the Retail Industry

The House of Commons Retail Industry Briefing Paper (May 2015) reports that the UK retail sector is the largest industry based on the number of employees. In 2013, the entire sector accounted for 539,000 businesses with a total of 4.3 million people employed, 15.8% of the total UK population. The retail industry contributed £180 billion to the UK economy output in 2014, 11% of the total, and contributes around £17.5 billion in taxes each year.

Over the past few years, a key development in the sector is the increasing value of internet sales and the change in consumer purchasing practice. From January 2007 to January 2013, the value of retail internet sales rose from 2.7% to 11.1%.

Overview of the Science Industry

Science inevitably becomes increasingly central across all sectors of society. Science plays a decisive role in the advancement of society, and the more we understand the more we are able to progress & positively change the future. Science is considered to be the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social worlds following systematic & methodical approaches based on evidence.

Overview of the Security Industry

Approximately half a million people are employed in the UK private security sector, which contributes approximately £6 billion to the UK economy. A major growth area within the security sector is cyber security, now estimated to be worth over £2.8 billion to the UK economy (gov.uk, 2013). The UK government has recognised this growth and has allocated £860 million towards the UK 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy, with the aim of improving the national protection of cyber infrastructure.

Overview in the Social Care Sector

The social care sector covers professions that support people with issues related to physical and mental health or those that are related to general lifestyle-related. Social care is often separated into child care and adult care services. Adult social care is the fastest growing part of the sector and it is likely to continue to be so, with an ever ageing population.

The social care sector helps approximately 2.3 million adults in the UK and employs just over 1.8 million people, which is around 6% of the total UK workforce. According to Skills for Care, there are an estimated 17,300 organisations working within the sector, employing more women than men; this accounts for around one in ten of all female workers within the UK. 

Overview of the Sports Sector

According to SportEngland.org the contribution of the sport industry to the economy reached £20.3 billion in 2010. This represents 1.9% of the total English economy, thus placing the sport sector up in the top 15 industry sectors above motor vehicles, telecoms services, legal services, accounting, publishing, advertising and utilities. Sport employment remains a crucial component of the UK economy, supporting over 450,000 jobs, around 2.3% of all UK employment.

The Sport and Recreation Alliance (SRA) is the umbrella organisation for the governing and representative bodies of sport and recreation in the UK and includes 320 members such as the Rugby Football Union, The FA, British Racing, UK Athletics and British Rowing. The SRA explains that in 2014 there were over 2 million adults in the UK who volunteered at least 1 hour per week to the sports sector. This would cost the UK an estimated £2.7 billion a year to employ fulltime workers to undertake the work completed. About 47% of the sports industry is employed part-time, compared to 27% of the whole UK workforce (SkillsActive, 2010).

Overview of the Telecommunications Sector

The telecommunications sector is a dynamic segment of UK economy in its own right, as well as an integral element of all other industries. The sector provides a wide range of specialist skillsets, ranging from communications systems analysts, infrastructure designers, network engineers, programmers, technical support, telecoms sales and customer services.

The exponential growth of social networking further transforms the telecommunications sector, as social media increasingly becomes embedded in everyday life, evolving at pace the global instant multi-matrix communications platform we now live in.

Technology Insights 2011 states that approximately 1.5 million people are employed within some relation to the IT and telecommunications industry, which equates to 1 in 20 employed UK individuals. The UK’s combined IT and telecommunications industry contributes approximately £81billion (9%) to the total UK economy. 

Overview of the Tourism Industry

Visits to the UK surpassed 34.3 million in 2014, with an average spend of £636 equating to a total spend of £21.8 billion for the UK economy. France, Germany and the US account for to 30% of all UK visitors and 27% of total tourism expenditure (VisitBritain, 2015).

Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors for UK employment, and is set to have total industry value of £257 billion by 2025. The tourism industry provides 3.1 million jobs to the UK economy which equates to 9.6% of total UK employment (Deloitte, 2013).

According to VisitBritain, in the 2014 Anholt GfK Nations Brand Index the UK retained 3rd place as a ‘nation brand’ behind Germany and the USA. Rankings cover 50 nations, including leading and emerging economies, and are produced by collating the views of 20,000 people around the world annually. The overall nation brand is made up of scores for six dimensions – Tourism, Culture, People, Immigration-Investment, Exports and Governance. Looking at the dimensions relevant for tourism the UK ranked 3rd out of 50 nations in terms of a ‘Tourism’ brand and 5th for ‘Culture’.

The Tourism Alliance states that the UK tourism industry has become the UK’s fifth largest export earner, with revenue from inbound tourism increasing by almost 30% since 2008. Domestic tourism has grown significantly with revenue increasing by 11% to £78bn from 2011 to 2014. 

The transport and logistics sector plays a vital role to the UK economy, covering the areas of aviation and shipping, UK waterways, rail & metro infrastructure, taxis, private hire and community transport, national bus & coach services, driver training and transport planning, as well as freight, distribution, storage warehousing and postal services.

The UK logistics industry is worth over £96 billion to the UK economy each year and employs around 2.3 million people in over 188,000 companies. Approximately 8% of the UK workforce is employed in logistics. Wholesale employs the greatest number of people in logistics with 41% of the workforce. The postal service is the second largest logistics employer with 14% of the workforce, while driving (road haulage) accounts for 13% of the workforce. A quarter of the value of all transported goods in the UK is carried as air freight.

The UK passenger transport industry contributes approximately £23.6 billion to the UK. Passenger transport employs around 735,000 people and is critical to the UK economy.