Bosses urge Government to act to avoid ‘travesty’ of firms failing before vaccine rolled out

Leaders of some of the UK’s top hospitality and leisure firms today made urgent pleas to the Government to help businesses avoid the “travesty” of collapsing just as the vaccine is rolled out.

Bosses told the Standard they need ministers to offer longer-term certainty and extension of support schemes — such as the business rates holiday due to end on March 31 — into 2022.

Clive Watson, chairman of the City Pub Group, said: “The rollout of the vaccine will be too late to save many pubs unless the Government can extend the business rates holiday, reduce VAT rates and increase grants. It would be a travesty if the pub industry collapsed just as the vaccine started to kick in.”

Young’s chief executive Patrick Dardis said that ministers need to confirm the rates holiday and 5% VAT relief will be extended until March 2022, and to present “a clear exit strategy and timing to get the economy open again”.

Chief executive of Fuller's, Simon Emeny, said: "With the vaccine program gaining momentum it’s now vital that Government develop a clear strategy for 2021...We are all trying to plan ahead and with this Government that has been virtually impossible."

David Page, chair of AIM-listed firm Fulham Shore, also called on the Government to help business by stopping “making week-by-week and day-by-day decisions”.  Page said sector bosses now believe “we are not going to be back to ‘normal’ until the July -September 2021 quarter at the earliest”, and argued that all current reliefs offered to business should now “taper off” between this summer and March 2022. 

Chaker Hanna, boss of listed London-based restaurant group Comptoir Libanais, said “business needs certainty”, and warned that without further Government intervention to support firms with rents negotiations “many more viable businesses will fail and the resulting unemployment will do even greater damage to the economy”.