Key Points
(Bloomberg) -- Restaurants and bars across Britain are having to slash staff working hours to cushion the blow of a 3.4 billion ($4.3 billion) spike in annual costs, according to the head of the sectors trade body..
Kate Nicholls, chief executive officer of UKHospitality, said sites were also cutting back their opening hours to deal with a tsunami of costs.".
From today, increases to minimum wages in the UK will raise the sectors wage bill by 3.2 billion, while higher business rates will add an extra 224 million, the group said..
Youve got an awful lot of costs already hitting the business energy, food waste, food inflation and then youve got wage cap costs on top and tax increases in the form of business rates.".
Reforming business rates, temporarily reducing the rate of employer National Insurance Contributions and cutting VAT are some of the levers that governments can pull to help businesses absorb recent price increases, Nicholls said..
