I've had time to look at the figures closely. Here's the devastating impact of Rachel Reeves's Budget - Adam Brooks
Adam Brooks warns the thousands of businesses in the hospitality sector will not survive Rachel Reeve's Budget
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Publican Adam Brooks warns the thousands of businesses in the hospitality sector will not survive Rachel Reeve's Budget
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Let’s cut the polite niceties and say what everyone in hospitality is saying…this Labour Budget is an outright assault on the British pub, the British high street, and every small business still clinging on after years of crisis.
Rachel Reeves stood at that dispatch box and declared she was reducing business rates for us, a neat little line, packaged perfectly for the evening news. But when you look at the figures, when you strip away the PR spin, the truth is absolutely brutal. Hospitality is being whacked harder than ever, and Rachel Reeves knows it.
Look at the numbers, because they don’t lie - even if the politicians do.
By 2028/29, the average pub will see its business rates bill jump 76 per cent, and the average hotel, a jaw dropping 115 per cent increase. But here’s the kicker: warehouses used by online giants will rise by just 16 per cent, offices 7 per cent and supermarkets 4 per cent.
So much for “levelling the playing field between the high street and online giants”. This Budget does the absolute opposite. It tilts the pitch so far against pubs, restaurants and hotels that many simply won’t stay standing.
And hospitality leaders across the sector are sounding the alarm.
“This is the final nail in the coffin for some,” warned UKHospitality’s Kate Nicholls.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve seen tax after tax levied on the sector,” said CEO Allen Simpson.
Another industry voice didn’t mince words: “This is a hammer blow and it will be existential for many.”
And let’s be honest, they’re spot on, because our industry isn’t sitting on luxury reserves or billionaire margins. Our margins are wafer thin. And that’s before Labour slapped on a 15 per cent increase in year one, NIC hikes, minimum wage cost jumps, and inflation fuelled rent rises.
A third of SMEs are already just breaking even at best. A quarter have no cash reserves whatsoever.
Any increase becomes existential, not inconvenient, existential. And still, after all this, Labour have the audacity to claim they’re “helping” hospitality.
Helping... We’re still paying off the loans we were forced to take in the Covid era, while our customers have less disposable income than at any time in recent memory, while our rents have soared, our overheads have ballooned, and we’re capped on what we can responsibly charge for a pint because there’s a limit to what working people can afford.
Do these politicians hate the British pub? It’s a fair question, because if you drew up a plan to wipe out thousands of pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants, it would look exactly like this. And let’s not forget VAT.
While European countries support their hospitality and tourism sectors with lower rates, often around 10–12 per cent, we’re being hammered with 20 per cent. Nearly double. A tax burden that prices customers out and pushes businesses closer to the cliff edge with every passing month.
Pubs aren’t just businesses, they’re our culture, they’re our heritage and they’re our community. They keep high streets alive, they support taxis, hairdressers, local shops and tradespeople, the whole ecosystem of a functioning town depends on them.
Yet this government behaves as if we’re disposable. Well, we’re not. And we won’t go quietly.
Hospitality needs an emergency Budget amendment, business rates relief that actually relieves, not punishes… a VAT cut that brings us in line with Europe, and a Chancellor who understands that you cannot keep shovelling costs onto a sector already on its knees.
If Labour won’t act now, they’ll preside over the destruction of one of Britain’s last great cultural institutions…the pub. And the public won’t forget who locked the doors and turned off the lights.