PR Week has extended the deadline for its Top UK Consultancies League Table. Speed submitted its numbers last week.

March 2009 saw Speed created from the five PR agencies owned by Loewy. The headline number of the sum of the parts is more than 30 per cent down as a result of less than a handful of client decisions to cut budgets.

But we remain adamant that it was the right year to pursue the strategy we did to build Speed around a fragmented media proposition. The new business has scale, is strong and fit for purpose – and crucially is attracting good people and clients.

We thought long and hard about whether or not we should participate in the league table. I’d rather not reveal our underwear to the rest of the industry but that’s not sport and it would have been gutless for a business that prides itself on transparency.

Last year the Top 150 list was characterised by no-shows presumably because agency bosses felt that their results were less than impressive. Is PR Week giving us early notice that the situation will be worse for 2009 by dropping ‘150’ from the title of the league tables and extending the filing deadline? I hope not.

There has been lots of talk over the last 12-months of the industry benefiting from the downturn in 2009. Folklaw says that public sector spending, digital and a shift in budgets from other areas of marketing have all worked to benefit the industry.

At the PRCA and CorpComms Conference in October PRCA chairman and Ketchum boss David Gallagher was upbeat. “Although there is still a quarter to go, member agencies are reporting anecdotally that 2009 will either be flat or slightly up,” he said.

If you are an agency leader please submit your numbers whatever your outcome for 2009 so that PR Week is able to produce an accurate picture of the state of the industry and we can scrutinise and plan the long term future of the industry.