Accountancy Age has just published its annual list of the Top 50 accountancy firms and not surprisingly just nine of the Top 50 increased growth on their previous figures. Four in five firms saw growth rate slow, some dramatically on previous years – and nine posted negative growth figures.

The Top 10 list remains virtually unchanged on last year with only positions 9 (Tenon Group) and 10 (PKF UK) changing places. PricewaterhouseCoopers again tops the list with a UK fee income of £2,244m, followed by Deloitte and KPMG. Deloitte experienced a growth rate of 11.5% (£2,010m), down on the previous year’s 15.6%.

Confidence for the year ahead is mixed; 32% of respondents said they expected revenue growth rate to be higher than last year, 35% said lower while 33% thought it would remain about the same.

Although one third of the surveyed firms expect to increase UK partner numbers this year the outlook for firm’s other staff isn’t so favourable. 25% expect to reduce support staff while 17% will cut professional staff numbers. It doesn’t look too promising for graduates either as only 2 firms expect to increase graduate recruitment.

Tax departments have also suffered with only six firms having an increased growth for tax revenues over previous years. However more than 33% of the firms that reported figures (33 out of 50) did see double-digit growth.

From our perspective in tax, the volume of recruitment may be down but that’s not to say the market has ground to a halt. There will always be a certain number of vacancies in tax due to the nature of the business and our view is that once the economy picks up, the tax job market will be one of the first to respond.