CEO Update

The CV Show 2019 opens at the NEC next week, with thousands of visitors registered to attend the UK’s largest commercial vehicle show. It’s no wonder that the event will feature world-first industry launches, because the country remains a vital…

Protestors have delivered gridlock to central London this week, with one of their suggestions being that the government should reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 – including the removal of all petrol and diesel vehicles from the road by…

Yet another week of frenzied Brexit discussion might have finished with a six-month delay, but for UK business there’s no end in sight to the instability and uncertainty. On the one hand, it’s positive that we’ve avoided a ‘no deal’…

This week saw SMMT Connected 2019 taking place at the QEII Centre in London – it has been two years since we last held the conference, and the pace of development of connected and autonomous vehicles in that time has…

UK automotive manufacturing figures for February were released this week – the most attention-grabbing of the numbers was the -15.3% year-on-year drop in car production, which now marks nine successive months of decline. This drop is by no means just…

Chaos or cataclysm? Roughly three years since the UK voted to leave the EU, parliament and the country is as divided as ever. Our scheduled date of departure may have moved (although not yet legally), but in shifting it potentially…

Despite the overwhelming majority in the House of Commons this week against a ‘no deal’ departure from the European Union, the threat of a cliff-edge Brexit still looms large on 29 March. Without a change to the law passed to…

This week saw the launch of Mission Automotive, an exciting new initiative that aims to find ex-armed forces personnel employment in the car industry. It’s being coordinated by the team behind Mission Motorsport, which SMMT has supported for a number…

UK car manufacturing figures were published this week, showing an -18.2% decline for production in January. It’s hugely concerning that we’ve now seen eight successive months of decline, in part due to falling domestic demand for cars, but worryingly we’re…

Honda’s announcement this week that it plans to close its Swindon plant in 2021 is devastating news for the people who work directly for the company but also for those in the supply chain, and a blow to UK automotive…