Campaign Focus | High street support ahead of the Budget

Hello,

High streets and what can be done to help them have been big topics over the past week (they should be every week!). Plus, the Budget is only 10 days away and we have already seen the papers start to speculate the contents. It does appear that supporting high streets will one of the bits of good news, and I am sure we will have more ‘leaks’ before the 28th October.

Last Tuesday Bira was asked to attend a HCLG (Housing, Communities and Local Government Department) select committee. The agenda was to discuss the recent announcement by the PM and the government to support high streets (i.e. rates reductions for pubs, banning vape shops and gambling halls, retail crime and general high street support).

These meeting never last long enough, and we were not the only attendees. However, we did make the following points:

1.  Helping pubs alone will not save the high street. All high street businesses need more support.

2.  Yes, there may be too many vape shops, and some are ‘dodgy’. But the real problem is that the costs of running a legitimate business on a high street are simply too high and forcing good businesses off the high street. We need a new approach to fixing high streets and supporting the hard-working businesses instead of tinkering around the edges.

3.  We talked about retail crime and acknowledged that there have been improvements in terms of the response from police forces in England and Wales. However, we need to ensure that the police and trading standards have the resources to address the growing problem of dodgy shops.

4.  For business rates we suggested returning to what we had in 2024 – 75% discount up to a value of £110,000. It looks increasingly likely that the Chancellor will increase the small business rates allowance by 50% to £18,000 RV (any business below that level will not pay business rates). Whilst this is welcome, it does not help the medium sized retailers who face a 25% increase next year if extra support is not forthcoming.

5.  Finally, we stressed that we need to reduce the cost of employment by starting to roll back the NICs increase from 2024 and increasing the employers national insurance allowance

These messages were followed up later in the week with interviews with the Times newspaper last Wednesday and appearing on LBC last night. We will continue to push right up to the Budget.

Thank you.

Andrew