Any help for pubs is welcome. They are local employers and meeting places, as our Community Pub Hero campaign showed. Yet Andy Burnham’s announcement is too little, and it is not soon enough.
He has promised a 20% business rates cut for pubs, social clubs, and smaller live-music venues. A typical pub will save £1,100. That sounds useful until you read the small print: not until April 2027.
By then, businesses will have endured the rest of this summer, a difficult winter, and nine more months of Labour’s higher employment taxes, added regulation, and failure to control energy costs. Ministers created much of this pressure. They cannot expect applause for returning a fraction of what they have taken.
Then comes the glaring omission. UKHospitality says hotels face average business rates increases of 110%, yet get nothing. Nor do restaurants, B&Bs, cafés, holiday parks, family attractions, and amusement venues. That is much of our coastal economy.
Earlier this month, I brought the Shadow Culture Secretary to Harbour Park, Bailiffscourt Hotel, Pinks Parlour, and East Beach Café. Employers told us that costs are affecting opening hours, recruitment, prices, and investment. A family attraction deciding whether it can afford to open does not need another promise for next spring. It needs relief now.
Hospitality does not operate in tidy Whitehall boxes. Visitors who stay in a Bognor Regis hotel might spend at a café, restaurant, shop, attraction, and pub. Support one link while taxing the others harder, and the whole coastal economy suffers.
I have already asked the Treasury for the sector-by-sector impact of its business rates changes. It ducked the figures. The Conservatives’ costed alternative is permanent 100% business rates relief across retail, hospitality, and leisure, reaching 250,000 businesses.
Burnham should widen this relief at the Budget and bring it forward. Until he does, this is a narrow fix dressed up as a rescue package, while another crucial summer passes our coastal businesses by.
You can read my original article for SussexWorld here.
