Gavin Peck, ceo of The Works, was one of over 80 of the UK’s leading retailers, who wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves last week in a letter organised by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
The letter, which also expressed concerns about the introduction of packaging levies, warned the Chancellor that retail jobs will be lost, stores will shut, and prices will have to rise due to the triple blow of the increases in National Insurance for employers, higher national minimum wage costs, and the doubling of business rates, announced in October’s Budget, which was widely condemned by the British Independent Retailers Association (Bira), as well as retailers across the board, to including stationers.
Other signatories to the letter included John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Card Factory and Fenwick. The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, also gave his backing to the letter.
The BRC letter stated: “For any retailer, large or small, it will not be possible to absorb such significant cost increases over such a short timescale. The effect will be to increase inflation, slow pay growth, cause shop closures and reduce jobs, especially at the entry level.
“This will impact high streets and customers right across the country. We are already starting to take difficult decisions in our businesses and this will be true across the whole industry and our supply chain.
“We appreciate the government’s focus on improving the fiscal situation and investing in public services; we also recognise the role businesses have in supporting this, but the sheer scale of new costs and the speed with which they occur create a cumulative burden that will make job losses inevitable, and higher prices a certainty.”
October’s Budget saw the rate of employers’ national insurance increased by 1.2% to 15% from April, and lowered threshold from £9,100 a year to £5,000.
