TL;DR
The Lloyds Business Barometer finds 54% of UK firms have created roles tied to AI, and 58% intend to spend more on skills over the coming year. Most of that spending is modest: 42% expect to commit somewhere in the £25,000 to £100,000 range. The headline cuts against the displacement narrative, but the detail is a story about company size.
Where the money is going
Among firms raising training budgets, 42% land in the £25,000 to £100,000 band and 26% in the £100,000 to £250,000 one. Roughly half already think their people have the skills required; 31% say they do not.
The responses to that gap are unevenly ambitious. Introducing training is the common answer at 43%, with 32% extending programmes they already run. Fewer are changing how they hire — 24% weighting AI skills in recruitment, and 21% creating dedicated AI roles.
The divide is turnover, not sector
Six in ten firms use AI. Above £10m of turnover the figure averages 79%, and 77% of that group plan to spend more. Firms trading internationally sit at 63% against 46% for those selling only domestically.
Belief follows the same line. Nearly six in ten think non-adopters will end up at a competitive disadvantage — but it reaches 73% in the above-£10m bracket against 54% below the £1m mark. The businesses least equipped to act are also the least convinced they need to, which is the harder problem for policy to reach.
Cost leads the barriers at 18%. Skills availability ties with data quality on 17% apiece. Among firms selling only at home, 23% name cost.
Looking forward
Lloyds is not a neutral observer here: the group announced over 1,000 AI-related roles for 2026, nearly 300 of them in agentic AI, plus an AI engineering apprenticeship pitched at Level 6. Read alongside Scottish engineering’s finding that manufacturers use AI daily while 68% train nobody, the barometer suggests intention is running well ahead of practice. “Created jobs” is also a survey perception rather than a payroll count, and self-reported optimism has been the weakest part of the AI evidence base so far.