BRITAIN’S nighttime industry says urgent intervention is needed to save businesses from the cost of living crisis.
Michael Kill, the CEO of the Night Time Industries Association said whoever replaces Boris Johsnon next week must act immediately.
Speaking to GB News’ Weekend Breakfast, Mr Kill said: ” “Well it’s catastrophic in a word, and I think we’ve mentioned that word so many times over the last three years, so it’s worrying that we’ve come about to that space again.
“But just to give you a bit of an example; a pub operator, 200 capacity pub operators in the southeast, in 2021 early last year, were paying £35,000 a year. In 2022 in the early parts of the year, their energy costs have gone up to £86,000. And if they were to renew their energy contract today, they would be paying upwards of £150,000 a year. And that just benchmarks the critical position many of these businesses are in. And for many of them, it’s untenable. So there are huge amounts of them considering handing their keys back to landlords and stepping away from the industry.”
Discussing the lasting effects of the pandemic on businesses, Mr Kill added: “There is this legacy debt position. Many of these businesses are still fighting off debts from the pandemic, up to about £133k per unit. And, you know, it’s been a torrid year. It’s almost like we’ve come out of lockdown and been able to open from the 19th of July, we’ve had a run of being able to open and build confidence amongst consumers and workforce.
“We’ve had our challenges and now we’ve been faced with another crisis as we move into 2022. So, it’s frustrating for everybody but without a doubt at this point with the costs, as they sit, we need an intervention from the new PM administration coming in next week.
“And it needs to happen immediately, really, to stop this fallout of industry businesses going to the wall.”
This week saw the British Beer and Pub Association pen a letter to the government and the Conservative leadership candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, stating mass job losses were inevitable in the absence of help for an industry that employs 940,000 people.
Additionally, Sacha Lord, the night-time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, has warned that there is a ‘perfect storm tearing through the heart’ of the hospitality and nightime industries in the UK and that closures are likely on an unprecedented level without support.
