AUS
NZ
UK
CA
USA
IND
Highlights
- Chancellor, Rishi Sunak unveiled a support package worth about £1 billion for businesses hit by the new variant.
- The package included one-off grants of £6,000 per premise in the hospitality and leisure industry.
- Around 200,000 firms are expected to be eligible for the business grants under the new support package.
The UK’s chancellor to the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, announced on Tuesday a support package worth about £1 billion for businesses that have been hit by the rise of the Omicron variant.
Support package unveiled amidst rising pressure
The package will offer support to pubs, restaurants and other businesses in the hospitality and leisure sector.
The move came as the government has faced increasing pressure from the hospitality industry amid reduced footfalls in what is usually a strong trading period for pubs, restaurants and other such businesses.
Sunak’s £1 billion support package
The new package includes several measures:
- One-off grants of about £6,000 per premise, for companies in the hospitality and leisure industry.
- Discretionary funding of over £100 million, which will be given to local authorities in order to help other businesses
- Additional funding of about £30 million, via the Culture Recovery Fund, to help support England based cultural organisations during the winter season, amongst other announced measures.
Around 200,000 firms are expected to be eligible for the business grants under the new support package. The grants will be administered by local authority bodies and will be given to the eligible businesses in the upcoming weeks.
© 2021 Kalkine Media®
The government’s support package has been termed ‘generous’ by UK Hospitality CEO Kate Nicholls. She added that the funding support for suppliers, event and catering firms was a welcome move.
Criticism from other sectors
However, Sunak’s announcement has drawn criticism from other sectors, such as the travel sector and nightlife economy. They have also been impacted by Omicron but have not received sufficient support as yet.
Nightlife economy
Wales-based nightclubs are expected to shut down from 27 December.
UK’s Nightlife industry body, the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA)’s CEO Michael Kill, said that while the sector needs every pound of help, the support package was too less.
A Guardian report quoting Mr Kill, stated that a £6,000 grant per venue would not be enough to help support nightclubs during the sector’s key Christmas and New year’s trading period.
This period is very crucial for the sector as some nightclubs can earn as much as 33 per cent of their annual revenues during the month of December.
Travel sector
Meanwhile, bosses from the travel sector stated they were ‘left in the cold’ following the package announcement.
The sector has faced a sharp rise in overseas trip cancellations after stricter covid-19 measures came into place. Some of these measures include covid testing and self-isolation rules post arrival into the UK.
Industry body, the Business Travel Association’s CEO, Clive Wratten, called on the Treasury to urgently correct their oversight and offer support for the sector going into 2022.
According to ABTA’s Luke Petherbridge, the travel industry’s average annual revenue is lower by almost 80 per cent from pre-pandemic levels, even before the emergence of Omicron
Petherbridge added that the reintroduction of enhanced testing had increased costs and also reduced consumer demand. (ABTA is a UK based travel industry body)
Industry bosses called on the government to help the travel sector by immediately easing travel restrictions which were unnecessary.
Moreover, the government can offer grants similar to the one offered to the hospitality sector and consider the reintroduction of the furlough scheme, amongst other measures.
