'Flexible workforce will only grow with support'

The UK’s flexible labour market will only keep growing if the government offers its aspiring and existing practitioners better support.

The alert, from the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (IPSE), was issued in light of the second successive drop in the number of people working for themselves.

In fact, according to the Office of National Statistics, self-employment fell between April and June by 95,000, thanks to 70,000 fewer full-time freelancers and 25,000 fewer part-time freelancers.

The ONS figures mirror IPSE’s findings, which show a fall in the proportion of freelance contractors who were “on assignment” in the second quarter, from 86% in Q4 2014 to 80% in Q2 2015.

“We need the government to look at ways to encourage people to become self-employed and support those already working in this way,” appealed IPSE’s chief executive Chris Bryce.

“Considering a large proportion of jobs created in the past five years came from the self-employed community, the government will be relying on this group to meet its ambition of an extra two million people in the labour market by the end of Parliament.”

As to why the number of one-man bands is decreasing, IPSE pointed out that almost half of contractors it surveyed think that the cost of being one’s own boss is heading in the wrong direction.

It reiterated its belief that Summer Budget 2015 made things worse, and warned: “The government must provide better support to the self-employed if it wants to continue growing a flexible and healthy economy.”