Loungers chairman Alex Reilley has called on the government to give the entrepreneurs and job creators of the future one last shot of support because time is running out for them. Reilley said the government must to scrap employers’ national insurance and pensions contributions for all small hospitality businesses and backdate it to the beginning of November and “refund accordingly”. He said: “If the pandemic had hit 12 years ago when we were a business with nine sites, I very much doubt we’d have survived. In the past 12 years, we’ve opened a further 161 sites and, in the process, created more than 4,500 jobs. How many small, viable hospitality businesses with enormous potential will fail as a result of the government not providing additional support at the 11th hour? Expecting these businesses that have no turnover and nothing left to pay employers national insurance and pension contributions is plain wrong. Everyone in hospitality will do everything they can to keep their teams together and you can guarantee the last penny that goes out the door before it’s ‘game over’ will be on ensuring staff are paid. However, the simple fact of the matter is that if there’s no business left, there’s no jobs, resulting in an unimaginable amount of jobs, that the government has fought to save, being lost. Thousands of hospitality businesses will run out of money in the coming weeks resulting not just in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs but the loss of businesses that can create jobs and play a very significant part in helping any future economic recovery. Rishi Sunak, if you want to invest money to create jobs you need look no further than giving hospitality businesses the extra support they need to survive in order to, genuinely, protect jobs and keep future job creators afloat. Loungers was a small business once and I know how hard this must be hitting small businesses in our sector. I also know the sacrifices business owners will be making in order to try and make it through. Having a business that’s created 5,000 jobs is my proudest achievement but things could have been so different had a pandemic hit when we were small. So, Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully, let’s get these small businesses through to the other side. You need to scrap employers’ national insurance and pensions contributions for all small hospitality businesses and backdate it to the beginning of November and refund accordingly. Calculate it on a maximum level of historic turnover or number of employees, but target it at small businesses only. Our business will be fine, as will the great majority of big businesses in our sector, albeit we would like an extension to the VAT cut and business rates holiday because this will help us to plan making investments and creating jobs. But let’s give the entrepreneurs and job creators of the future one last shot of support and let’s do this urgently because time is running out.” Reilley also said he was “sick of the government and the media claiming the furlough scheme is a support measure for businesses in hospitality (and other sectors)”. He said: “Furlough costs our business more than £100,000 a week and we have £0 turnover. This is not business support, and claims that it is are deceitful. Alex Reilley (Extracted from Propel)
Recent Comments