There is a major culture in the UK at the moment which has resulted in many IT support experts or other staff in computing being laid off by small businesses in IT, it has been said.

Gerry McLaughlin, a representative of ITContractor.com, responded to recent statistics showing falls in job vacancies and dwindling numbers of IT workers in companies.

He said that in this digital age, there is a major need for people to focus on the importance of IT, with access to information through a team of dedicated professionals regularly being the differentiating factor in an organisation's success.

Mr McLaughlin asserted that it should be avoided, adding: "While at big companies they can retain enough IT staff who understand the business, small businesses do not have excess fat in terms of IT staff that they can just lop off when a downturn comes along."

This week, a report by Forrester discovered that many small businesses in IT are planning to cut budgets by four per cent, though staffing levels will be largely safe, although cuts will occur in under a third of businesses.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.