The Brewers Group has been recognised as one of The Sunday Times Best Places to Work for the second year running! Published in partnership with WorkL, The Sunday Times Best Places to Work celebrates the UK’s leading employers — organisations that are creating exceptional workplaces where people feel valued, supported and inspired to succeed. This recognition is based on colleague feedback, measured through WorkL’s employee engagement survey. The survey evaluates organisations across six key areas that shape a positive workplace experience: Reward and recognition. Instilling pride Information sharing Empowerment Wellbeing Job satisfaction At The Brewers Group, our people are at the heart of everything we do. From career development opportunities and wellbeing support to a welcoming, team-focused culture, we’re committed to making Brewers a place where everyone can thrive. Our Group CEO, Simon Brewer says: ‘We’re grateful to The Sunday Times for naming us as a best place to work for a second year. Our vision for The Brewers Group is clear: to play our part in making the world a brighter place. This starts with empowering our people to develop a career where they feel valued and supported.’ Many colleagues build long-term careers at The Brewers Group, developing their skills across different roles and departments while being part of a supportive and collaborative team culture. If you’re looking to build a rewarding career with a company that values its people, we’d love for you to join The Brewers Group. The Brewers Group operates through several well-known brands: Brewers Decorator Centres, Wallpaperdirect, The Paint Shed, PaintWell, Promain, Albany and The Brewers Academy.

Employees are often described as “part of the family” in family-run firms. But in a competitive market, that sentiment needs to be backed up by a benefits package that is clear, valued and well-governed—especially workplace pensions. Brooks-Benefits is offering Family Business United readers a free review to help family businesses strengthen their employee benefits and engagement. Family businesses succeed because they think long term. They invest in relationships, reputation and resilience across generations. Yet many owners tell us that one of their most pressing challenges is also one of their greatest opportunities: attracting, retaining and motivating great people without losing the culture that makes the business special. Employee benefits—particularly workplace pensions—can feel administrative, technical or “something we set up years ago”. But for employees they are tangible signals of fairness, care and professionalism. For owners they are also a governance issue: the right approach can reduce risk, improve outcomes and support a stable, engaged workforce. Why Employees Matter Even More In Family-Run Businesses In a family business, employees often experience the business differently to a corporate environment: decision-makers are visible, values are personal, and loyalty can be rewarded over many years. That creates real strengths—but it also means that inconsistent benefits, unclear communications or “we’ve always done it this way” can be felt more keenly. Culture and trust: benefits are a practical way to demonstrate that the business values people, not just performance. Retention and succession: keeping skills in-house supports continuity—critical when leadership is planning for the next generation. Reputation in the community: family firms are often prominent local employers; being known for looking after staff helps recruitment. Cost control: a well-designed benefits strategy can deliver more value for the same spend, and avoid unpleasant compliance surprises. The Offer: A Free Employee Benefits Review From Brooks-Benefits Brooks-Benefits specialises in advising employers on workplace pensions and employee benefits. For UK-based businesses run by families, we are offering a free, no-obligation review designed to give owners clarity on what they have, how well it meets their workforce needs, and where quick wins may exist. The review can cover, for example: Workplace pension arrangement: suitability, charges, governance and how the scheme supports employee outcomes. Auto-enrolment duties: practical checks to help ensure the essentials are in place (assessing staff, communications, contributions and records). Contribution design: whether your approach is competitive, sustainable and aligned to your reward philosophy. Employee benefits snapshot: what’s offered today (e.g., life cover, income protection, private medical insurance, wellbeing support) and whether employees understand and value it. Communication and engagement: what employees are being told, how often, and what could be improved. Added Value: Financial Education And Engagement Seminars Even strong benefits can be under-used if people don’t understand them or are financial stressed. Brooks-Benefits can also discuss the value of financial education and engagement seminars to help employees make informed choices and feel more confident about their money. Seminars can be tailored to your workforce and may include topics such as: • Finances Fit for the Future – financial planning for your people • Planning for retirement • Financial Planning with Young Children • Mid-Life Financial MOT • Mortgages made simple For family businesses, this is about more than “financial wellbeing” as a buzzword. Helping employees understand their benefits and improve money confidence can support engagement, reduce stress-related absence and reinforce a culture of care. What You’ll Receive (and what we’ll need from you) The aim is to make this straightforward and low disruption. Typically, we’ll start with a short meeting, review your current arrangements, and then feed back practical recommendations you can act on—whether that’s quick improvements or a longer-term benefits roadmap. Initial conversation: your business goals, workforce profile and what “good” looks like for you. Information gathering: key scheme and benefits details (we’ll tell you exactly what we need). Review and analysis: pensions and benefits assessment, plus an engagement snapshot. Feedback: a clear summary of findings and prioritised actions. Education plan: recommended seminar topics and an outline schedule. An invitation to Family Business United readers If you would like an independent view of your workplace pensions and employee benefits, Brooks-Benefits would be pleased to help. The free review is a practical starting point—built around the belief that when you invest in your people, you protect the legacy of the business. About Brooks-Benefits: Brooks-Benefits advises employers on workplace pensions and employee benefits, helping businesses improve outcomes for employees while keeping governance and value for money in focus. To arrange your free review: Please e-mail: groupadmin@brooks-financial and quote Family Business United. Brooks Macdonald Group plc is registered in England and Wales (Company Number: 04402058, Registered Office: 40 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2BJ). It is the parent company of our group of companies. “Brooks Macdonald” is a trading name used by certain companies within our group. Several of our companies provide services that are regulated by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Boilerplate clauses: why the “standard” parts of a contract matter more than you think Boilerplate clauses tend to sit towards the back of commercial agreements, often carried over from previous contracts with little discussion. Because they look familiar and widely used, they are easy to dismiss as routine housekeeping that carry minimal commercial weight. That assumption can prove expensive. In practice, boilerplate provisions can determine how a contract operates when a relationship comes under pressure. They shape whether either party can rely on pre-contract discussions, how the agreement can be amended, who can take over rights and obligations and what procedural steps must be followed before litigation can be started. When boilerplate wording is unclear, inconsistent, or transplanted without proper consideration, it can introduce uncertainty at precisely the point when clarity matters most. This article considers three commonly used boilerplate clauses that frequently have significant practical consequences and explains why getting them right is a worthwhile investment at the contracting stage. Entire Agreement Clauses These clauses are intended to confirm that the written contract is the complete agreement between the parties. Their purpose is to minimise disputes about earlier drafts, negotiations, emails or informal discussions, and to ensure that the parties can point to a single document as the definitive record of what has been agreed. Difficulties arise where the contract does not fully reflect what was discussed or understood during negotiations. Commercial relationships are often shaped by assurances, expectations and background discussions which may not make it into the final drafting in a clear or comprehensive way. In those circumstances, the entire agreement clause can quickly become a pressure point if the relationship deteriorates and one party seeks to rely on what was said before signature. Risk is heightened where the clause sits alongside other provisions that pull in a different direction, such as warranties, acknowledgements or reliance wording elsewhere in the contract. If those provisions are not consistent, the entire agreement clause may create uncertainty about what was relied upon and what legal remedies remain available, rather than delivering the certainty it was designed to achieve. Where a party’s intention is to exclude or limit liability for pre-contract statements, that generally requires careful and specific drafting. A well-drafted entire agreement clause should therefore reflect the realities of the negotiations, align with the wider structure of the agreement, and support the parties’ intended risk allocation. Variation Clauses Most commercial contracts evolve after signature. Operational changes are common, whether that involves revised deliverables, changes to service levels, adjustments to timescales, or a broader shift in the commercial relationship between the parties. When the relationship is working well, those changes are often agreed pragmatically, and in some cases informally. The legal difficulty is that informal changes may later be disputed. A variation clause (sometimes called a “no oral modification” clause) is designed to reduce that risk by requiring amendments to be recorded in writing and agreed in a specific manner. This is intended to prevent arguments about whether a contract has been varied through conversation, email exchanges, conduct, or the parties simply operating in a different way over time. In practice, the effectiveness of the clause depends on how clearly it is drafted and whether it reflects how the agreement will be managed day-to-day. Standard wording often states that variations must be “in writing and signed” but may not address practical questions such as who within each business has authority to approve changes, what form of written agreement is acceptable, or whether email confirmation is enough. Where contracts are managed operationally rather than legally, it is not uncommon for parties to agree changes in practice but fail to document them in alignment with the variation clause. A variation clause is therefore most effective when supported by internal discipline. Organisations should be clear on who has authority to agree amendments, how changes should be documented and how those records are stored and referenced. Without that consistency, a contract may not reflect the commercial position the parties are actually operating under, increasing the likelihood of dispute and undermining certainty if enforcement becomes necessary. Assignment and Novation Boilerplate clauses governing assignment and novation control whether contractual rights and obligations can be transferred to another party. This becomes particularly important where a business is acquired, reorganised or where contracts are moved within a wider corporate group. Although the concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, the distinction matters. Assignment typically transfers rights (for example, the right to receive payment) but does not transfer obligations. Novation, by contrast, is required where one contracting party is to be replaced entirely, so that both rights and obligations pass to a new party. The difference can have real operational consequences, particularly where the parties assume that responsibility for performance has moved when, legally, it has not. These provisions also matter because the identity of the counterparty is often fundamental to the commercial risk of the deal. Contract terms may have been agreed on the basis of due diligence into the other party’s financial strength, group structure, reputation and performance capability. If rights or obligations can be transferred without meaningful control, the risk profile of the contract may change materially without the other party having any real say in the matter. Problems frequently arise where assignment clauses are drafted too narrowly, or where the agreement does not reflect the way businesses change ownership and control in practice. A contract may restrict assignment but say nothing elsewhere about change of control, meaning the contract remains with the same legal entity but that entity is now owned or managed by a completely different business. Without appropriate drafting, that can leave a party exposed to a significant commercial change with limited contractual protection. Assignment and novation provisions should therefore be approached as deliberate risk management tools. They should reflect the commercial importance of the relationship, make any consent requirements clear and align with the reality of how the contract might be affected by corporate restructures, acquisitions or group reorganisations. Why Boilerplate Clauses Matter Boilerplate clauses are sometimes treated as “standard” in the sense that they appear neutral and may apply equally to both parties. In practice, they often determine where leverage sits when issues arise. They shape what can be relied upon, how remedies can be pursued, what formal steps must be followed and how easily the contract can be adapted as circumstances change. This is why boilerplate clauses so often sit at the centre of disputes. Even where commercial terms have been carefully negotiated, poor boilerplate drafting can create avoidable uncertainty, weaken enforceability, and lead to outcomes neither party anticipated when signing. For that reason, boilerplate should be treated as part of the contract’s core risk allocation, reviewed with the same attention as the headline terms, drafted with the operational realities of the relationship in mind and checked for consistency across the agreement as a whole.

Family businesses are the backbone of the global economy. They employ more people, sustain more communities, and contribute more to national prosperity than many politicians and policymakers ever fully acknowledge. But right now, across every continent and every sector, family firms are navigating a set of challenges that are more complex, more interconnected, and more demanding than anything the sector has faced in living memory. At Family Business United, we've been listening to family business owners across the UK and beyond, and the themes that keep coming up are strikingly consistent. Here, we set out the ten issues that are defining the family business agenda in 2026 — and why they matter. 1. Succession Planning Ask any adviser who works with family businesses what keeps their clients awake at night, and succession will almost always come up first. Who takes over, when, and how are the key questions that touch on family relationships, personal identity, and the long-term survival of everything the founding generation has built. Too many family businesses still don't have a formal succession plan in place. They mean to get around to it, but the day-to-day demands of running the business always seem to take priority. The problem is that by the time a transition becomes urgent, it's already very difficult to manage well. "Succession is never just a business problem — it's a family one too," says Paul Andrews, Founder and CEO of Family Business United. "The businesses that handle it well are the ones that start the conversation early, involve the right people, and treat it as a process rather than an event. It takes time, it takes honesty, and it takes a genuine commitment to the long-term future of the business over the short-term comfort of avoiding a difficult conversation." 2. Geopolitical Uncertainty & Economic Volatility The world has changed dramatically in recent years, and family businesses have felt every tremor. Inflationary pressures, supply chain disruption, shifting trade policies and geopolitical instability have combined to create an operating environment that is genuinely unpredictable. According to PwC's 2025 Global Family Business Survey, economic volatility impacted nearly seven in ten family businesses in the US alone, with geopolitical risk close behind. For family firms, which often have deep roots in specific communities, sectors or supply chains, this kind of volatility is particularly hard to absorb. The long-term orientation that makes family businesses so admirable can also make them slower to pivot when circumstances demand it. 3. Digital Transformation & AI Digital transformation is no longer a future challenge — it is a present one. Artificial intelligence, automation, and data-driven decision-making are reshaping every industry, and family businesses that fail to engage with these changes risk being left behind by more agile competitors. The good news is that many family firms are embracing the opportunity. Research from Deloitte shows that 40 per cent of family businesses now cite investment in technology — particularly AI — as their top growth strategy. The challenge is doing so in a way that preserves what makes a family business special. "Technology should be an enabler, not a threat to identity," says Paul Andrews. "The family businesses I admire most are those that are using digital tools to serve their customers better and to free up their people to focus on the things that really matter — relationships, quality, and doing right by the communities they operate in. That's what family business has always been about, and technology done well should reinforce that, not undermine it." 4. Governance & Decision-Making As family businesses grow and pass through generations, the informal decision-making structures that worked perfectly well in the early years can start to creak. More family members, more branches, more complexity — and often, no clear framework for how decisions get made or disputes get resolved. Good governance isn't about bureaucracy. It's about clarity. Businesses with formal boards, family councils, and clearly articulated constitutions are consistently better placed to handle the challenges that come their way — whether that's a disagreement between siblings, an unexpected leadership transition, or a major strategic decision. 5. Engaging & Developing the Next Generation The next generation of family business leaders is arriving with different expectations, different values, and different ideas about what good leadership looks like. That's not a problem — it's an opportunity. But only if the current generation creates the space for them to genuinely contribute. Too often, next-gens are brought into the business without a clear role, without proper development, and without any real authority. They're expected to prove themselves, but they're not always given the tools or the trust to do so. Getting this right is one of the most important investments a family business can make. "The next generation are not just the future of family business — they're a real asset right now," says Paul Andrews. "The families that are thriving are the ones that bring their younger members in properly, listen to what they have to say, and create a genuine pathway to leadership. It takes confidence from the older generation to let go a little, but the rewards for doing so are enormous." 6. Talent Attraction & Retention Family businesses have long prided themselves on being great places to work — loyal, values-driven, with a genuine sense of belonging. And for many, that reputation is entirely deserved. But the talent market has changed, and family firms are now competing for people against remote-first employers, global businesses, and organisations with dedicated HR departments and compelling employee value propositions. Younger professionals want flexibility, clear career development, and a sense of purpose in their work. Family businesses can offer all of these things — but they need to articulate them better, and sometimes formalise them more, than they have in the past. 7. Sustainability & ESG Sustainability has moved from the margins of the business agenda firmly to the centre. Customers, employees, investors, and regulators are all asking harder questions about environmental impact, social responsibility, and corporate governance — and family businesses are not exempt from that scrutiny. In many ways, family firms are well placed to lead here. Their long-term orientation, their community roots, and their values-led culture make sustainability a natural fit. But good intentions need to be backed by action, reporting, and accountability. "Family businesses have always cared about doing the right thing — that's in their DNA," says Paul Andrews. "Sustainability isn't a new concept for firms that have been thinking in generations rather than quarters. But the expectations have risen, and the need to demonstrate that commitment — not just feel it — has never been greater." 8. Reputation & Trust Family businesses enjoy a significant reputational advantage over their corporate counterparts. Consumers trust them more, employees tend to be more loyal, and communities value their presence. But that trust is not unconditional, and it can be damaged — sometimes quickly and sometimes permanently. In an age of social media, instant scrutiny and heightened stakeholder expectations, family businesses need to be thoughtful about how they communicate, how they behave, and how they engage with the communities around them. A reputation built over generations can be undermined in weeks if it isn't actively tended to. 9. Cybersecurity As family businesses invest in digital infrastructure, their exposure to cyber risk grows. Yet many, particularly smaller and mid-sized firms, still underestimate the threat, or assume that cybercriminals only target large corporations. The reality is very different. Family businesses are attractive targets precisely because they often hold valuable data and assets without the same level of security infrastructure as their larger peers. Cybersecurity needs to be a board-level conversation in every family business, not something that sits solely with the IT department, or worse, is assumed to be someone else's problem. 10. Wealth Transfer & Taxation The so-called Great Wealth Transfer is well under way, with trillions of pounds, dollars and euros moving between generations over the coming decade. For family businesses, this means navigating inheritance tax, ownership structures, estate planning, and the complex interplay between business succession and personal wealth — often across multiple jurisdictions. Get this right, and the business survives and flourishes. Get it wrong, and a business that took generations to build can be forced into a sale, a restructure, or worse, simply because the tax planning wasn't in place. "The wealth transfer challenge is one of the most significant the sector has ever faced," says Paul Andrews. "There's a huge amount at stake — not just for individual families, but for the economy as a whole. Family businesses need proper advice, they need to plan early, and the government needs to understand what's at risk if the tax environment makes it too difficult for these businesses to pass through the generations intact." Looking Ahead None of these challenges is insurmountable. Family businesses have survived recessions, wars, technological revolutions, and generational upheaval before. Their resilience is extraordinary, and their contribution to the world economy — already standing at an estimated $21 trillion in collective revenue — continues to grow. But meeting the challenges of 2026 and beyond will require family firms to be more deliberate, more open, and more willing to seek advice than perhaps they have been in the past. The good news is that the community, the resources, and the support are there for those who want them. Family Business United will continue to champion the sector every step of the way.

There's something really positive happening across the family business community right now, and it deserves to be celebrated. More and more daughters are stepping up, stepping in, and stepping forward to lead the businesses their families have spent generations building. And quite frankly, it's brilliant to see. For too long, the assumed narrative around family business succession followed a well-worn path. The eldest son would shadow the founder, learn the ropes, and eventually take the reins. Daughters, however capable and however committed, were often overlooked — sometimes overtly, sometimes simply through a lack of expectation on anyone's part. That picture is changing, and the family business community is stronger for it. A Shift That's Been Building This isn't a sudden shift. It's been building quietly for years, driven by a generation of daughters who grew up around the business, who understood it from the inside out, and who simply refused to be sidelined. They've gone out, gained experience, built their own credentials, and come back ready to lead. Many haven't just maintained what their parents built — they've transformed it. We're seeing it across every sector. In food and drink, in manufacturing, in retail, in agriculture. Family businesses that have been household names for decades are now being steered by women who carry the family values in one hand and a clear vision for the future in the other. That combination — deep roots and fresh thinking — is exactly what family businesses need to thrive across generations. What Daughters Bring to the Table It would be reductive to suggest daughters lead differently simply because they are daughters. Every individual brings their own strengths. But what the research does tell us — and what many family business founders are discovering for themselves — is that a daughter who has grown up embedded in the business often brings an emotional intelligence and a long-term orientation that is genuinely hard to replicate. They understand the culture. They understand what the business means to the people who built it. And they tend to think carefully about legacy. There's also something to be said for the external perspective that many next-generation daughters bring back. Having worked elsewhere, built networks of their own, and seen how other businesses operate, they return with fresh ideas that respect the past without being constrained by it. The Challenges Haven't Disappeared Let's not pretend it's all plain sailing. Daughters stepping into leadership roles in family businesses still face challenges that their brothers or male counterparts often don't. Questions about authority can surface — from within the family, from long-standing employees, occasionally from customers or suppliers who are simply not yet accustomed to the change. Establishing credibility in industries that have traditionally been male-dominated takes effort and resilience. There's also the internal family dynamic to navigate. Succession decisions are rarely straightforward, and when gender is even an unconscious factor in those conversations, the best candidate can get overlooked. Founders and family business owners have a responsibility here, to look honestly at who is best placed to lead, and to create the conditions where daughters feel genuinely invited into that conversation. The Family Business Community Has a Role to Play One of the things we love most about the family business community is how willingly people share their experiences and support one another. That has a real role to play here. When we celebrate daughters who are leading family businesses — when we put their stories front and centre, invite them to speak at events, profile them in our publications — we send a powerful signal to the next generation watching from the wings. Role models matter enormously. A young woman who can see herself reflected in the leaders being celebrated by the community is far more likely to put her hand up, lean in, and back herself when the moment comes. Something to Be Genuinely Proud Of The family business sector has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to values-led, people-first business. The growing number of daughters taking on leadership roles feels very much in keeping with that tradition, it's about putting the right people in place, nurturing talent from within, and building businesses that can carry a family's legacy forward with confidence and purpose. So to every daughter currently leading a family business, preparing to take the reins, or simply wondering whether there's a place for her at the table — there absolutely is. The community is behind you, the evidence is on your side, and the businesses you'll build will be something to be incredibly proud of. Now more than ever, it really is great to see you stepping forward.

It's celebration time for two high-profile Cheadle summer entertainment events after the town’s biggest employer pledged its support. Digger giant JCB which has two factories at the Harewood Estate, Leek Road, Cheadle donated £1,500 each to Cheadle Carnival, which kicks off in early July, and the town’s Party in the Park event which takes place in early August. Handing over the cheques, JCB Compact Products Operations Manager Jamie Barker said: “Cheadle is home to two important JCB manufacturing sites – our Compact Products and Earthmovers factories – and many of our employees are local families, so we are delighted to give back to the community that supports us so well. These events are the lifeblood of the community and I am sure they will both be a great success.” Cheadle Carnival will take place from Friday July 10th to Sunday, July 12th at Tean Road Recreation Ground and will feature a "Rave on the Rec" on Friday, a parade and live music on Saturday, and family-friendly activities throughout the weekend. Carnival Committee spokesperson Hayley Beresford said: “After being cancelled in 2025 owing to lack of funds, we are delighted to be back with a brilliant line-up of entertainment for the whole town to enjoy. As a volunteer committee we rely on fundraising and sponsorship from local businesses to make the carnival happen and we are grateful to JCB for their continued support.” Cheadle’s family fun day ‘Party in the Park’ will be on Sunday August 9th at Tean Road Recreation Ground and will feature a main arena act, live music, free entertainment for children, food and drink outlets and charity stalls. Accepting the cheque on behalf of the Party in the Park, Town Mayor Councillor Kate Mills said: “Cheadle Town Council’s annual Party in the Park has become a firm favourite with the local community and the continued support of JCB and other local businesses means it can remain a free event for families to enjoy." To find out more about Cheadle Carnival visit here and for more information about Cheadle Party in the Park visit here. Photo: Pictured at JCB Compact Products, Cheadle are (left to right): Cheadle Party in the Park organiser Cllr. Paulette Upton, JCB Compact Products General Manager Jamie Barker, Mayor of Cheadle Cllr. Kate Mills, Operations Manager Greg Leese, Cheadle Carnival organiser Hayley Beresford and Materials Manager William Watson.

There is a moment that many family business owners recognise, though few can quite articulate when it happened. It is the moment a customer, an employee, or a prospective partner says something like "I've always bought from you lot" or "my grandmother used this brand." And in that moment, something clicks. The history was not just behind you. It was doing something. It was working. The family business has always had an advantage that no amount of marketing budget can entirely manufacture: a genuine story. Not a brand story in the sense that a consultant has crafted it in a workshop, but a real one, with real people, real decisions made under pressure, and real consequences that echoed through generations. The question is not whether that story exists. It almost certainly does. The question is whether you are using it. Why Heritage Is Not Just For The Old And The Grand There is a temptation to assume that heritage branding belongs to the grand old names. The firms that have been trading since the reign of Queen Victoria. The distilleries, the law firms, the family farms that can trace their lineage back through the centuries. If your business is twenty years old, the thinking goes, there is not much of a story to tell. This is worth challenging. Heritage is not simply a function of age. It is a function of meaning. A business founded by a parent who remortgaged the family home in the aftermath of redundancy, who built something from nothing with a van and a Rolodex, carries a story that resonates every bit as powerfully as one with a crest on the letterhead. What matters is not how long you have been here. It is the human truth of why you started, what you have been through, and what you stand for as a result of it. The brands that connect most deeply with their customers are the ones that feel real. And nothing makes a brand feel more real than the knowledge that actual people, with actual names, made actual sacrifices to build it. Going Back To Go Forward Before you can build your family history into your brand, you have to actually know what the history is. This sounds obvious, but it is surprising how many family businesses operate on an oral tradition so thin that the founding story has become little more than a shorthand. "Dad started it in 1978" says very little. What was happening in 1978? Why did he start it? What did the early years look like? What nearly finished the whole thing off, and what got you through? This is worth sitting down and genuinely excavating. Talk to the oldest members of the family, ideally with a recorder running. Dig out old photographs, old invoices, old correspondence if it exists. Find out which decisions were pivotal, which relationships shaped the course of the business, which moments of crisis or luck changed everything. You are not just gathering material for a website. You are assembling the actual connective tissue between who you were and who you are. The process itself tends to be valuable in ways that go beyond marketing. Family businesses sometimes carry a great deal of unspoken history, things that happened before the current generation arrived that have quietly shaped the culture without anyone quite naming them. Understanding the history can illuminate the present in ways that are genuinely useful for leadership and strategy, not just brand communications. What Makes A Family Narrative Authentic There is a version of this that goes badly wrong. The polished origin story that mentions the founding generation in reverential tones but gives no texture, no difficulty, no sense that the journey was anything other than dignified and orderly. This version tends to land with a thud, because it feels curated in a way that real stories do not. Customers and employees have well-developed instincts for the difference between a story that was lived and one that was written in a brand guidelines document. Authenticity in this context means including the hard bits. Not in a way that undermines confidence in the business, but in a way that makes the story feel human. The generation that nearly sold up but chose to persevere. The product line that failed. The years when the market turned against you and you had to adapt or disappear. These are not blemishes on the narrative. They are its spine. The businesses that endured hardship and came through it have demonstrated something far more compelling than the ones that simply grew in favourable conditions. It also means being honest about change. The family business that was founded as a manufacturer and is now a services business has a story to tell about why and how that transformation happened. Trying to paper over the change, or to pretend continuity that does not quite exist, tends to create a narrative that rings hollow. The evolution is the story. Lean into it. From Archive To Asset Once you have the material, the question becomes how to deploy it. The answer will differ depending on your audience, your sector, and the channels through which you speak to the world, but some principles tend to hold across most contexts. The physical manifestations matter more than many businesses realise. Old photographs in reception. A timeline on the wall of the boardroom. Products or equipment from earlier eras, kept and displayed with care. These are not nostalgic decorations. They are daily reminders, for employees and visitors alike, of a continuous identity that predates everyone currently in the building. They say, quietly but clearly, that this organisation has endured, and intends to continue. The people dimension is equally important. Family businesses are trusted, in part, because customers sense that someone with skin in the game is accountable for the quality of what is delivered. Making that visible, through the names and faces of the family members involved, through their voices in communications and on social media, through the presence of the next generation as they come through, reinforces the very thing that makes the family business distinct. It is not a marketing technique. It is just showing what is actually there. And the narrative itself needs to live in more than one place. The about page on the website is the obvious starting point, but the story should surface naturally in how your people talk about the company, in how you introduce yourselves at networking events, in the language of your proposals and pitches. A heritage that exists only in an archived PDF has not been turned into a brand asset. It has been filed away. The Next Generation And The Narrative Handover There is one aspect of this that family businesses often handle less well than they might, and it concerns the handover of the narrative as well as the handover of the business itself. When the next generation takes the reins, there is sometimes an unconscious pressure to mark the transition by moving away from what came before. To signal modernity, ambition, and change. In some respects this is healthy and appropriate. But when it extends to distancing the brand from its own history, it tends to sacrifice something valuable and hard to rebuild. The most compelling version of a generational transition, from a brand perspective, is one that honours the past whilst articulating clearly what the business is becoming. The new leader who can speak with genuine pride and knowledge about the founding generation, who understands the decisions that were made and why, and who can connect that thread to their own vision for the future, is delivering something that no corporate rebrand can replicate. They are demonstrating continuity of values even as the business evolves. This is worth preparing for deliberately. Part of preparing the next generation for leadership is ensuring they know the story deeply enough to tell it confidently. Not as a piece of received family lore, but as lived understanding of how the business came to be what it is today. The Quiet Advantage In a marketplace increasingly dominated by brands that are largely constructs, by businesses that exist primarily as algorithms and platforms, the family firm with a genuine multi-generational history has something genuinely rare to offer. Not just a product or a service, but a relationship with time itself. The sense that someone built this with their hands and their choices, that real people staked their futures on it, and that those same families are still here, still accountable, still invested in a way that goes well beyond a quarterly earnings call. That is not a small thing. In fact, for many customers, it is precisely the thing that tips the balance. The business that knows who it is, where it came from, and why it is still here is the one that earns the kind of trust that takes competitors decades to understand, let alone replicate. The story was always there. The work is in the telling.

Every family business starts with a set of values, even if nobody calls them that at the time. They are the instincts behind the early decisions, the way the founder treated the first employees, the standard of quality they refused to compromise on, the commitment to the community that made the business feel like something more than a commercial transaction. In the early days, those values do not need to be written down or talked about. They are simply lived, modelled by the people at the top and felt by everyone around them. But as the business grows, as headcount increases, as new sites open, as the second or third generation steps in, something changes. The values that once spread naturally through proximity and example now have to travel further. And that is when the real work begins. The Invisible Architecture Values in a family business are easy to take for granted precisely because, in the early stages, they seem to look after themselves. The founder is present. Everyone knows what is expected. The culture is carried in the conversations, the decisions, the way things have always been done. There is no need to articulate what everyone can already see. But growth is, among other things, a test of culture. Every new employee who joins without knowing the founder's story, every manager hired from outside the family, every acquisition or new market entered - each of these is a moment when the values either prove themselves robust enough to travel, or quietly begin to erode. And the erosion is rarely dramatic. It happens gradually, in small compromises and unspoken shifts, until one day the business looks and feels different in ways that are hard to name but impossible to ignore. The families who navigate this well tend to understand something important: values do not sustain themselves. They require active stewardship, not as a corporate exercise, but as a genuine ongoing commitment to the thing that makes the business worth building in the first place. From Lived To Articulated The first step in protecting a family business's values through growth is often the hardest: finding the words. Many founders are deeply uncomfortable with this process. The values feel self-evident, almost too personal to reduce to a list of bullet points on an intranet page. And they are right to be cautious, a values statement that reads like a corporate brochure and bears no relationship to daily reality is worse than useless. It breeds cynicism, and cynicism is one of the fastest ways to hollow out a culture. But articulation, done well, is not about sanitising the values into something bland and transferable. It is about capturing what is genuinely distinctive, the specific, sometimes idiosyncratic commitments that set this business apart, in language that is honest enough to mean something. It often helps to involve people from across the business in this process, not just the family. The employees who have been there for twenty years frequently have the clearest sense of what the business actually stands for, as opposed to what it says it stands for. Their perspective is invaluable. The goal is not a polished brand statement. It is a living description of how this business behaves when it is at its best, specific enough to guide decisions, honest enough to be believed. Values In Action, Not On Walls Once articulated, values have to be embedded in the everyday fabric of the business, not displayed on a wall and forgotten, but actively present in the decisions that matter. This means thinking carefully about how the values show up in recruitment: are you hiring people who genuinely share them, or simply people who know how to say the right things in an interview? It means looking at how performance is measured and rewarded: are you recognising behaviours that reflect the values, or inadvertently incentivising the opposite? It means asking, honestly, whether the family members in the business are modelling the values consistently, because nothing undermines a culture faster than a gap between what the leadership says and what it does. It also means being willing to make difficult decisions in the name of the values, even when it is costly. Turning down a contract because the client relationship would compromise your standards. Parting ways with a high performer whose behaviour is inconsistent with how the business treats people. These moments are never easy, but they are defining. They tell everyone in the organisation, far more loudly than any values statement ever could, what the business actually stands for. The Next Generation And The Values Question One of the most delicate challenges in any multigenerational family business is the relationship between continuity and change. The next generation inherits the values, but they also inherit the right to interpret them for a new context. This is not a threat to the culture, it is how cultures stay alive. The values that matter most are not the specific practices or traditions built around them, but the underlying principles those practices were designed to express. A commitment to quality, for example, might have looked one way in the founding generation and look quite different in the third, not because the value has been abandoned, but because the world in which it is being expressed has changed. The businesses that handle this well create space for that conversation: between generations, between family and non-family leaders, and between the business's past and its future. They hold the principles firm while remaining genuinely open about how those principles should be expressed today. The Long Game The family businesses that endure are not simply those that perform well financially across generations. They are those that remain, in some recognisable and meaningful way, themselves. Their values are not a relic of the founding era or a marketing tool dusted off for award entries, they are a living thread that runs through everything the business does, visible in its decisions, felt by its people, and trusted by its customers. Keeping that thread intact as the business grows is not straightforward. It requires attention, honesty, and a willingness to have the conversations that growth tends to push aside. But it is also one of the most important investments a family business can make, because the values are not separate from the competitive advantage. In most cases, they are the competitive advantage. Protect them accordingly.

Most family businesses do not fail because they make bad commercial decisions. They fail because the family falls apart. The product might be excellent, the market strong, the revenue healthy. But when the relationships that hold a family business together begin to fracture, the business suffers, and if those fractures are not addressed early and honestly, the results can be catastrophic. The contrast between F. Hinds, the jewellery retailer founded in 1856 and now in its fifth generation of family ownership, and KTA Group Limited, the family business at the centre of the Hussain v Hussain litigation, could hardly be more stark. One family has steered its business through wars, recessions, retail revolutions, and the rise of e-commerce, and is still trading from the same head office in Uxbridge it has occupied for decades. The other ended up with one trial in the High Court, another in the County Court and then the Court of Appeal, with relationships destroyed, very significant legal costs incurred on all sides and a judgment that the presiding judge himself described would be unsatisfactory. The difference between them is not just luck, and it is not a reflection on the character or intentions of the people involved. It is about the structures, or the absence of them, that families put in place before the difficult moments arrive. When those structures exist, families have something to fall back on. When they do not, everything depends on trust, and trust, however deep it once ran, is not a governance system. F. Hinds: Stewardship, Fairness and the Long View F. Hinds was founded in 1856 and has been through every kind of commercial pressure imaginable. But the more remarkable story is not the business itself. It is how the family that owns it has managed itself across five generations without a serious dispute, without litigation, and without the kind of destructive falling out that ends so many family businesses before they reach their second generation, let alone their fifth. The thread that runs through the F. Hinds story is not sophisticated governance or expensive professional advice. It is something simpler and harder to manufacture: a shared sense of what is fair, and a genuine belief that nobody is entitled to more than they have earned. When the founders' grandsons faced their first major disagreement in the early 1920s, the question was how to divide twelve shops between two brothers who wanted different things from the business. One wanted to stick to jewellery retail. The other, an entrepreneur to his core, wanted to diversify into barber shops, cycle shops, the stage, and eventually Hammer Film Productions. Rather than fight about it, they devised a simple mechanism: for shops where neither felt strongly, they negotiated informally; for shops that were more hotly contested, the brothers submitted sealed bids for each shop, with the higher bidder taking that branch. The business was divided cleanly and fairly. According to Andrew Hinds, the current chairman, the two brothers remained on good enough terms to have lunch together occasionally afterwards. The genius of that resolution was not in its complexity. It was in the fact that both parties could see it was fair. Nobody felt cheated. Nobody left with a grievance. That same instinct for fairness shaped every major ownership decision that followed. By the early 2000s, the active shareholders in F. Hinds recognised that they had passive shareholders, family members who held shares but were not involved in the business, whose interests were legitimate but whose continued presence in the shareholder register created potential complications. A nephew was leaving university. He needed money. The shares his mother held were not generating meaningful income. Something needed to happen. The family's accountants advised them to negotiate hard and apply full minority discounts to the departing shareholders' stakes, the standard professional advice in these situations. The family declined. As Andrew Hinds explained: "That wasn't really the point of it." Instead, F. Hinds paid a higher value to the departing shareholders, at a point in the economic cycle the family believed was near its peak, structured the payments over a number of years so the business was not forced to take on debt, and ensured that everyone who left did so feeling they had been treated well. When asked why the family had consistently chosen to be more than fair rather than demand their "pound of flesh," Andrew Hinds gave an answer that cuts to the heart of the F. Hinds philosophy: "I think it's probably because we don't think of it as our pound of flesh. It was entirely in the gift of our parents what they chose to give us and not to give us. They could all have given it to the dogs home if they wanted to." "You've got no divine right just because you're somebody's child to inherit anything from them." That rejection of entitlement, that understanding that ownership is a gift rather than a right and that stewardship is a responsibility rather than a reward, underpins everything F. Hinds has done well. The family has always thought of itself as custodians of the business rather than its owners in any possessive sense. Each generation has held the business in trust for the next, making decisions with one eye on the long term and the other on fairness to everyone with a stake in the outcome. This attitude produced practical behaviours that compounded over time. Control stayed with those who were in and running the business. Value was made accessible to those who were out, at fair prices and without unnecessary argument. The transition of leadership from one generation to the next was managed with enough overlap to maintain continuity. Directors’ meetings, run every couple of weeks and described by Andrew Hinds as essentially a management meeting with the board governance formalities attached, allow decisions to be made collaboratively and without the build-up of unresolved tensions that characterises so many family business disputes. Votes are almost never needed. When someone objects strongly to a proposal, the instinct is to stay with the status quo rather than force a decision through. Non-family board members have been part of the structure for many years, providing external perspective and quiet discipline. On long-term strategic questions, these individuals tend to step back and allow the family shareholders to reach their own conclusions, before the decision is confirmed and everyone moves on together. None of this is rocket science. But it requires something that cannot be bought or imposed from outside: a shared belief that doing right by each other matters more than extracting the maximum value from any individual transaction. That belief, in the F. Hinds family, has been passed down as reliably as the shares themselves. The business is now in its sixth generation. The chairman is Andrew Hinds. The managing director is his nephew. A new generation is approaching. The challenges ahead are real and acknowledged openly. But the family approaches them with the same pragmatic honesty that has characterised their approach to every previous challenge. Problems are named. Options are considered. Fairness is the standard against which every proposal is measured. That is why F. Hinds is still here. KTA Group Limited: A Good Business and a Tragedy That Did Not Have to Happen The Hussain family built something genuinely impressive. KTA Group Limited, named after three brothers, Khadim, Talib and Allah, whose initials formed its identity, grew into a substantial business generating significant revenues. The family worked hard across two generations. The business was real, successful, and worth fighting for. Khadim Hussain, who brought the litigation, is not a man who went looking for a dispute. He started the business initially, invested his capital in it, grew it and believed in it. His complaint, at its core, was straightforward and human: that he was being pushed out of a business he had helped create, that money was being taken without his knowledge, and that the company he founded was being run in a way that excluded and diminished him. The ensuing board meetings during the litigation period were described as so distressing that it was feared that the stress would kill him. Khadim could not sleep in the fortnight before each board meeting, knowing what was coming. These are not the reactions of someone pursuing a tactical litigation strategy. They are the reactions of a man who felt deeply wronged. The difficulty was not that Khadim's complaint was unreasonable. It was that the company had been run for years in ways that were informal and undocumented, in a manner common to many family businesses where trust has historically made formal structures seem unnecessary. When things were good, that informality felt like closeness. When the relationships fractured, it became the source of every problem. There was no shareholders' agreement to establish what had been agreed. There was no written record of what each party was entitled to expect. The company's history, like that of many family businesses built on relationships rather than documents, left little solid ground on which anyone could stand when the dispute became serious. Following an unsuccessful mediation, the formal litigation began on 16 October 2020 when Khadim issued an unfair prejudice petition under section 994 of the Companies Act 2006. The trial took place in June 2022, spread across seven days of hearings. Both sides had to lay everything before the court: their conduct, their decisions, and their understanding of arrangements that had never been properly documented. It was an extraordinarily painful process for everyone involved, and particularly for Khadim, who had hoped the court would vindicate him. The judgment, handed down in July 2022, did not provide that vindication. The judge found that the way the company had historically been run, with informal practices that all parties had participated in over many years, made it inequitable for the strict enforcement of directors' duties to be used as the foundation for the relief Khadim sought. The judge found, contrary to Khadim’s evidence, that he had known about the money being unlawfully extracted by others in the family. His petition was dismissed. The judge noted, with some candour, that the eventual outcome would be "rather unsatisfactory" which was as close as the legal system came to acknowledging the human reality: that the courts are imperfect instruments for resolving disputes whose roots lie in broken family relationships rather than clear legal wrongs. Khadim appealed. After another unsuccessful mediation, in December 2023, the appeal was dismissed. By then, Khadim had spent more than three years in formal litigation, navigating a process that was costly, exhausting, and ultimately did not deliver the remedy he had sought. The financial cost of proceedings of this length and complexity, on all sides, had been very substantial. But the financial cost is only part of the story. The relationships between the brothers, and between the branches of the family, had been placed under a pressure that litigation can only intensify, never resolve. The business survived, of a kind, but not without a heavy toll on the people whose lives were bound up in it. What Khadim's experience illustrates, more painfully than almost any case could, is what happens when a family business reaches a crisis point without the structures that would have allowed the dispute to be resolved before it consumed everything. Had there been a shareholders' agreement setting out each party's rights and obligations, had there been a clear governance framework giving Khadim enforceable protections, had there been a mechanism for raising and resolving grievances before they hardened into legal claims, and had the members of the family adopted the “custodians” approach seen in F. Hinds, the story might have been very different. Khadim's legitimate concerns might have been addressed through a process designed for that purpose, rather than through adversarial litigation in which both sides are forced to expose every imperfection in their past conduct to public scrutiny. The tragedy of the KTA dispute is that people, bound together by family and by business, found themselves without the tools to resolve a conflict that proper structures might have prevented, or at least contained it. Concluding Thoughts The comparison between F. Hinds and the Hussain family is not a comparison between a virtuous family and a flawed one. It is a comparison between a family that, over generations, built structures around its values, and a family that relied on trust and relationships in place of structures, without ever anticipating the day when those relationships would be tested beyond their limits. F. Hinds has survived five generations because each generation understood its role as custodian rather than owner. It paid fair prices when family members needed to exit. It kept control with those who had earned it. It made decisions collaboratively and treated consensus as worth preserving. It approached every difficult question with the same pragmatic fairness that Andrew Hinds articulates so clearly: nobody has a divine right to anything. You earn your place, you treat others fairly, and you remember that the business exists for the generations that follow you, not just for yourself. Khadim Hussain believed in his business and in his family. He believed, perhaps too long, that the relationships and the shared history would be enough. When they were not, he did what any person in his position would do: he sought help from the legal system, the forum of last resort when everything else has failed. The legal system did its best, but it is not designed to repair families. It is designed to adjudicate rights, and in a situation where informality had made rights themselves unclear, even that proved insufficient. The lesson from both stories is the same. Family businesses need more than good intentions and mutual trust. They need the structures, the documents, the governance frameworks, and the clear understandings about fairness, value and control, that allow those good intentions to survive the inevitable moments when families are under pressure. When those structures exist, disputes can be resolved before they destroy everything. When they do not, even the best people can end up in the worst possible place. Khadim Hussain's experience is a powerful and painful reminder of what is at stake. He deserves better than to be remembered only for what went wrong in court. He deserves to be part of the conversation about how to make sure it does not happen to the next family business owner who finds themselves in his position.

There is a particular kind of tension that exists only in family businesses — the kind that sits across the boardroom table and remembers exactly who broke whose bicycle in 1987! Siblings who work together bring something to an enterprise that no recruitment process can manufacture: a shared history, a common language, and a depth of mutual understanding that can make collaboration feel almost instinctive. But that same closeness carries its own complications. The rivalries, the roles, the unspoken hierarchies, all of it comes to work every morning. How a family business manages the sibling dynamic can determine not just whether the working relationship survives, but whether the business itself does. The Strength Hidden In The Friction It would be easy to frame sibling relationships in business purely as a risk to be managed. The headlines, when family businesses unravel, often point to falling-outs between brothers and sisters as the catalyst. But this tells only half the story. Some of the most resilient, innovative, and enduring family firms in the world are built on sibling partnerships that work precisely because of the honesty, trust, and shared commitment that family brings. Siblings who have grown up together often communicate with a directness that colleagues who met in a professional setting take years to develop, if they ever do. They challenge each other without the political caution that can stifle honest debate in corporate environments. They share a stake in the outcome that goes beyond a salary or a share option — it is their name, their family's reputation, and their parents' life's work. That is a powerful motivator, and when it is channelled well, it becomes a genuine competitive advantage. The question is not whether the friction exists — it always does — but whether it is being put to productive use. When The Past Follows You Into The Office The challenge with sibling relationships in business is that they do not begin on the day the company is founded. They begin in childhood, shaped by years of comparison, competition, and the complex dynamics of family life. The older sibling who always felt responsible. The younger one who always felt overlooked. The middle child who learned to mediate. These patterns do not disappear when people step into professional roles, they go underground, only to resurface under pressure. This is why so many sibling conflicts in business feel disproportionate to the issue at hand. An argument about a hiring decision or a marketing budget is rarely just about the hiring decision or the marketing budget. It is carrying the weight of everything that came before it. Recognising this, and being willing to name it, is uncomfortable, but it is also the beginning of genuinely working through it. Many family businesses benefit enormously from bringing in an external facilitator or family business adviser at this point: not because the family cannot solve its own problems, but because having a neutral third party in the room changes the conversation in ways that are difficult to achieve from within. It is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of seriousness about making the partnership work. Roles, Responsibilities And The Danger Of Assumed Equality One of the most common sources of sibling tension in family businesses is the assumption, often well-intentioned, that things should be equal. Equal shareholding, equal salaries, equal authority. On the surface, this feels fair. In practice, it often creates exactly the opposite of what it intends. Businesses need clear lines of authority and accountability. When roles are blurred in the name of keeping the peace, decisions slow down, responsibilities are duplicated or avoided, and resentment quietly builds. The sibling who is doing more begins to feel undervalued. The one doing less feels unfairly scrutinised. Neither conversation gets had, because the equality principle has made it too awkward to raise. The answer is not to abandon fairness, but to redefine it. Fair does not have to mean identical. It means each person having a role that plays to their strengths, clarity about who is responsible for what, and a reward structure that reflects contribution honestly. This requires difficult conversations, often with the involvement of the wider family and, where appropriate, independent advisors, but the businesses that have them are invariably stronger for it. Building A Communication Framework That Works Siblings who work well together tend to have one thing in common: they have found a way to separate the family relationship from the business relationship, without pretending the two do not influence each other. This does not happen by accident. It requires deliberate effort and, usually, some kind of structure. Regular, formal business meetings, distinct from family gatherings, create a space where professional matters can be discussed with appropriate focus. Agreeing on how decisions will be made, how disagreements will be resolved, and what happens when consensus cannot be reached removes a great deal of the ambiguity that fuels conflict. Some families codify these agreements in a family constitution or a shareholders' agreement. Others keep it less formal, but the principle is the same: clarity, agreed in advance, prevents a great deal of pain further down the line. It is also worth acknowledging the importance of life outside the business. Siblings who spend every waking hour together, in the office, at family events, on the family WhatsApp group, have no space to decompress, no distance from which to gain perspective. Protecting time and identity outside of work is not a luxury. It is maintenance. The Partnership That Outlasts Both Of You At its best, a sibling partnership in business is something genuinely rare: a relationship built on love, loyalty, and a shared sense of what the business is for and where it is going. It can weather storms that would sink other leadership structures, precisely because the bonds beneath it run so deep. But it requires tending. The siblings who make it work are not those who never disagree, they are those who have decided, consciously and repeatedly, that the relationship and the business both matter too much to let the friction win. Getting that right is not just good for the two of them. It sets the tone for the whole organisation, and it builds the kind of foundation that the next generation can one day build on in turn.

Alan Boswell Group has been named the UK’s leading insurance broker for online visibility and reputation, according to the latest industry report from Foliume. The UK Broker Index highlights insurance brokers across the UK and assesses digital performance across five key areas: client voice, digital presence, credentials, scale, and longevity. With a total score of 81.8 - over 10 points ahead of its nearest competitor - Alan Boswell Group secured the top national ranking. This recognition reflects a sustained, business-wide effort to strengthen the firm’s online presence, alongside its long-standing reputation for client service. Lee Boswell, Marketing Director at Alan Boswell Group, said: “This is strong independent validation of the work we’ve been doing across the business. It’s not just about marketing output. It reflects how our teams engage with clients, build trust, and consistently deliver excellent service across every touchpoint.” The Foliume report draws on a wide range of data, including customer feedback, search visibility, online credentials, and overall business footprint, providing a comprehensive picture of how brokers are perceived and discovered online. For Alan Boswell Group, the result reinforces its position as one of the UK’s leading independent brokers and underlines the growing importance of digital visibility in supporting client relationships and enabling clients to choose how they want to communicate with their broker. “Online visibility now plays a critical role in how clients choose their broker,” added Boswell. “To be ranked number one in the UK shows that our approach is cutting through in an increasingly competitive market.” With over 450 personnel, the Group continues to prioritise a personal, human-led service, allowing clients to choose how to interact with them, be that online, over the phone, or in person.

Openreach and EMR, a global leader in circular materials, are urging the public to help stop metal theft by reporting suspicious activity anonymously to the independent charity Crimestoppers. The appeal follows a series of incidents that have caused widespread disruption and cost the UK public more than £4.3bn over the past decade. With copper prices at an all time high – and forecast to rise further in 2026 – the company’s network has become an increasingly attractive target for criminals looking for a quick profit. Recent incidents include: January 2026 - Moulton Chapel, Lincolnshire: 2,500 premises hit by a major cable theft, with residents left unable to contact hospitals to check appointments and one business owner describing it as “going back to the dark ages”. May 2026 – Birmingham: Three men jailed after stealing cables which cut off phone and broadband services for c.5,000 people. May 2026 – Wateringbury, Kent: A member of the public called police when three vehicles were used to remove cables from fields, impacting landlines for vulnerable customers in the local village. Repairs are ongoing. Andy Shepherd, Director of Resilience and Integrity at Openreach, said: “It’s really disappointing that communities across the UK are paying the price for this criminal behaviour. Cable theft causes serious damage, unacceptable disruption to communities and can put vulnerable people at risk." “We’re working closely with partners and using proactive security measures to reduce the impact of this criminal activity, but we also need the public’s help. If you see anything suspicious, please call 101 or contact Crimestoppers completely anonymously on 0800 555 111.” A spokesperson for the independent charity Crimestoppers said: “Cable theft can have a serious impact on local communities, cutting people off from essential phone and broadband services, and disrupting daily life for homes and businesses." “The recent cable theft in Kent is a clear example of why it’s so important that anyone who knows something speaks up." “If you have information about cable theft or suspicious activity around telecoms infrastructure, and don’t want to give your details to the police, the charity Crimestoppers is here for you." “Contact Crimestoppers 100% anonymously by completing a simple online form at crimestoppers-uk.org or by calling our 24/7 UK Contact Centre on 0800 555 111. By sharing what you know, you could be helping to protect vulnerable people and vital services from disruption.” EMR, a global leader in circular materials, is helping recover, process and recycle metals through its nationwide network of UK sites and specialist cable recycling facilities. Bruce Miller, Commercial Director at EMR, said: “Copper is now recognised as a critical material, with demand continuing to grow as industries invest in new networks, infrastructure and low-carbon technologies. That makes responsible recycling more important than ever." “At EMR, we play a vital role in recovering and recycling the materials needed for the future, while helping ensure they remain in legitimate circulation. Metal theft causes significant harm — disrupting communities, damaging essential infrastructure and putting public safety at risk." “As one of the UK’s largest metal recyclers, we work closely with law enforcement and partners including Openreach and Crimestoppers to prevent stolen material entering the supply chain. By working together, we can help protect critical infrastructure, support local communities and ensure valuable resources are recycled responsibly.” As part of the initiative, EMR has strengthened its commitment to tackling metal theft by installing signage across all UK sites, reinforcing its policy to refuse any material suspected of being stolen. Through responsible recycling practices and transparent material traceability, EMR continues to support higher standards across the sector while helping keep critical materials in the right hands. Metal theft isn’t a victimless crime Openreach builds and maintains the UK’s largest telecoms network and, since April 2024, more than 100,000 people across the UK have lost the use of their landline and/or broadband due to copper theft with 153 km of cable stolen in that time – spanning almost the same distance as from London to Bristol. The impact is far-reaching for consumers and businesses: from home working and online shopping, to contacting vulnerable relatives, GP surgeries, hospitals and schools, and running smart lighting and heating systems. Repairing and replacing damaged cables is often complex and time-consuming, with engineers working around the clock – alongside local authorities and partners – to restore services as quickly as possible. Since April 2024, Openreach estimates 1.2 million working hours have been diverted to repairing theft-related damage – time that could otherwise have been spent upgrading more homes and businesses to the UK’s most reliable broadband technology – Full Fibre. Network theft costs millions to repair each year, causing disruption and anxiety for local communities and damaging the UK economy. How we’re tackling the problem Since April 2025, Openreach’s specialist security team has instigated 90 arrests, but theft volumes are expected to increase during the summer months. Targeted cables are often pulled out of the ground and laid out in fields to be cut up and transported, so drier ground makes this easier to do – reducing the risk of criminals’ vehicles getting stuck in saturated fields. A knock-on impact is often damaged or destroyed crops, meaning farmers face harm to their livelihoods as well as their connectivity. To deter criminals and reduce disruption, Openreach continues to implement measures including a mix of: • Forensic marking technology such as SelectaDNA • Rapid response security measures and network alarms • Close collaboration with Police, the charity Crimestoppers and partners like EMR. More information on how to report damage to Openreach’s network is available here. About Openreach Our wholesale broadband network – the UK’s largest – supports more than 680 service providers like BT, SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen to provide broadband, TV, phone, data and mobile services to their customers. Any company can access our network through equal pricing, terms and conditions, and our team of around 25,000 people help deliver services to every community in the UK. Right now, we’re investing £15bn to build a new ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband network to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026. Work is on track, with the company intending to go even further - to as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade - assuming conditions for investment remain supportive. We’ve already reached 22 million premises and we’re passing thousands more every week. And we're retraining thousands of our existing engineers to help build, connect and maintain the new network. Our new network will help Openreach and its customers to dramatically cut emissions, with research suggesting nationwide Full Fibre broadband could save 400 million commuter trips every year. We're also switching our commercial fleet - the UK's second largest - to zero emissions by 2031. We’re a wholly owned and independent subsidiary of the BT Group and for the year up to the end of March 2025, we reported revenues of £6.157bn. Find out more visit here.