Rising energy costs ‘will force thousands of
corner shops to close’
Association of Convenience Stores urges chancellor to
provide more financial support for small shops
Kalyeena
Makortoff
@kalyeena
Sun 28 Aug
2022 17.49 BST
Thousands
of corner shops will be forced to close due to surging energy costs unless the
government steps in with emergency support, a trade body has said.
The Association
of Convenience Stores (ACS) has written to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi,
saying that without financial support its members will be driven out of
business. “We will see villages, housing estates, neighbourhoods and high
streets lose their small shops,” the letter says.
The trade
body, which represents 48,000 local shops employing 405,000 staff, said energy
bills had surged to an average of £45,000 for smaller members, a figure more
than double what store owners had been paying before renewing their contracts
in recent months.
Collectively,
it said its members were facing energy bills worth £2.5bn, and needed a support
package worth at least £575m to stay afloat.
“The
government needs to understand that this is an emergency. Thousands of
convenience stores will be forced to make extremely difficult decisions in the
face of tens of thousands of pounds of additional energy costs in the coming
months, which at best will include cancelled investments, reduced staff hours
and increased prices in stores, pushing up inflation even further,” it said.
“For some, however, the cost of energy will make the business unviable, and so
they will be forced to close unless action is taken to provide meaningful
support.”
The rescue
package outlined by ACS would include an emergency price cap on electricity for
small businesses, and a freeze on further increases in business rates, which
ACS also said should be scrapped between October and March.
“We cannot
overstate the urgency of the situation faced by our members. These are highly
resilient businesses selling a wide range of products and services, adapting to
the changing needs of their local communities. ACS does not usually forecast
large-scale closures of convenience stores, but we are in all seriousness doing
so now,” ACS’s chief executive, James Lowman, wrote in the letter.
A Treasury
spokesperson said the government understood that people were struggling with
rising prices and was trying to support businesses “to navigate the months
ahead”.
“We’ve cut
taxes for hundreds of thousands of businesses by increasing the employment
allowance and slashing fuel duty. We’ve also introduced a 50% business rates
relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, and put the brakes on
bill increases by freezing the business rates multiplier, worth £4.6bn over the
next five years,” the spokesperson said.
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