Our local pubs, restaurants, cafes, and hotels will help us celebrate the festive season with brilliant food, drink, atmosphere, and service.
But after facing a sustained period of pressure including recruitment challenges and operational costs, hospitality businesses up and down the county will have worked their socks off throughout the year to put on a consistently great service whilst giving so much back to our economy.
As Chair of the All-Parliamentary Group on Hospitality and Tourism, I’m calling on the Chancellor to take three clear actions on business rates in his upcoming Autumn Statement to help the sector survive and grow going forward:
1️⃣ Freeze the business rates multiplier
2️⃣ Extend the 75% relief for hospitality for a further year
3️⃣ Increase the cap to £2 million per business
In a nutshell, these actions will allow businesses to reinvest and grow whilst keeping costs down for themselves and their customers. Read my letter to the Chancellor on why this is so important:
As Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hospitality and Tourism, I am writing to urge you at the upcoming Autumn Statement to freeze the business rates multiplier, extend the 75% relief for hospitality for a further year, and an increase of the cap to £2 million per business.
Measures in the Autumn Statement 2022 on the multiplier and business rate relief has helped many businesses across the country, including in my constituency of East Devon, survive this extremely challenging period.
However, as you know, hospitality has faced a sustained period of pressure, including high energy bills, rising wage costs, as well as a challenging recruitment environment. Evidence from UKHospitality shows that if the Government fails to act on business rates, hospitality businesses in the UK could suffer close to £1 billion being added to their overall business rates bill, with increases insurmountable for many.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hospitality and Tourism, of which I Chair, recently heard from businesses, including Paulton’s Park and Amber Taverns, on the acutely detrimental impact it would have on their business if action is not forthcoming on this issue in the upcoming Autumn Statement. The response was clear that added costs will likely have to be passed onto consumers and would lead to business failures and job losses across the country.
From the evidence we received, businesses in the sector believe that the short-term measures outlined above would not only save a number of local and national businesses from closure but also enable others to invest and grow.
In the longer term, however, businesses we heard from are calling on the Government to consider structural changes to business rates to allow the high street to flourish.
The contribution of the hospitality sector in the UK is significant, generating 10% of total UK jobs, £140 billion in economic activity and £54 billion in tax receipts, thanks, in large to the vital support the sector received from Government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the coming Autumn Statement, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hospitality and Tourism is calling on you to act immediately to support the industry through what remains a challenging situation for many businesses by freezing the business rates multiplier and extending the 75% relief for hospitality for a further year. These steps would both protect and help many hospitality businesses to flourish in the years ahead.