Budget Day

The Budget by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the one day of the year when all the office has to pull together and all thoughts of empire building are put to one side. Every year we put together our own Budget Report, rather than buying one in, and get it out through the front door by seven thirty at the latest on the same evening - if you want a report from one of the big firms you'll have to wait until tomorrow or possibly Friday - those people living within walking distance of the office get theirs by six thirty.

As soon as Gordy sits down Angela and myself log onto the HM Treasury site and download his speech, the budget brief and the budget notes. This year the notes weighed in at 190 A4 pages and from this we have to pick the items we think will affect the majority of our clients and produced an eight page booklet for three hundred addresses. By four o'clock we had the first draft available and Billie Piper set about word processing and printing - we already had the first two pages drafted from the November budget when the 2007-8 Income Tax and National Insurance rates and allowances had been announced.

At just after five those staff involved in collating the report were in the boardroom putting it together the report and by 7:15 pm it was over - all those reports for clients in the town had been delivered by hand and the rest were on their way to the sorting office fifteen miles away for guaranteed next day delivery. In the years before the Internet the budget notes would have to be collected by hand from Somerset House and completion would take place at around about 9 p.m - in the days before New Labour when the budget speech didn't start before 3 p.m the process of producing the report didn't finish until well after midnight - so whilst some things may not have improved since 1997 at least the time we all go home on Budget day has!