Matthew Taylor

2024 has experienced continued growth in UK Public Sector interpreting. New public sector bodies have realised the importance and value interpreting can add, and on average, existing clients have double digit growth with no signs of this growth slowing.

Immigration has continued in the UK and across Europe, creating ever more demand on interpreting LSPs. Qualified interpreters are essential to ensure precise communication resulting in better outcomes for our clients and their customers, specifically improving health outcomes and preventing hospital re-admission. Interpreting LSPs will need to invest more in growing their supply chains to keep up with the volume of demand.

Looking back on 2024, two long term investments stand out, people and technology:
- Having great people is the essence of the business and without continuously adding high calibre individuals to the senior team, we would never have kept up with growth opportunities. Over the last 6 years I have strived to maintain a balance with mid-senior hires of circa 50% from industry and 50% new to industry and strongly believe this has helped eliminate complacency.
- Technology is essential to scale. Obviously, technology development of proprietary systems can be expensive, it can take longer than expected, but I was very lucky to receive good advice through 2021 and 2022 around investing in systems for scale and security. Its only years later (2024) when you realise how much that investment has paid off. Tech and people remain strategic priorities.

Finally, throughout 2024 developments in AI continued. Interpreting remains very much a human interaction with vast layers of verbal and non-verbal complexity and currently some strongly divergent opinions continue with regard to how these technologies can complement our industry. I would expect more alignment to emerge in 2025, a great time to be in Interpreting.