Save Scotland's high streets: Why SNP can't ignore this urgent plea for help
Finance Secretary Shona Robison needs to realise that the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are not crying wolf about their problems
Shops, restaurants and other high street businesses have been having a particularly tough time in recent years, with the rise of internet shopping, the Covid pandemic and associated changes in people’s habits, the cost-of-living crisis and the sluggish state of the economy all hitting them hard.
The seriousness of their plight has been recognised by the UK Government with retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England set to pay a permanently lower business rate from April next year. That this was a tax cut announced in the recent UK Budget which will, overall, see taxes go up by £26 billion only underlined how badly that help is needed.
However, only the Scottish Parliament can decide whether or not to provide the same help to businesses north of the Border. Now, ahead of the Scottish Budget next month, the Scottish Retail Consortium, UKHospitality Scotland, the Scottish Tourism Alliance, the UK Cinema Association and ukactive have written to MSPs urging them to back a rate cut for their struggling sectors, which collectively employ some 457,000 people.
‘Losing our high streets’
SRC director David Lonsdale said stores were “struggling to trade profitably which is why we have so many empty units and gap-toothed retail destinations”.
“Unless we see action to permanently maintain a competitive business rate for all retailers with England, it will likely mean investment shifts to more attractive and cost-effective locations down south,” he added. “... We’re one bad Budget away from losing our high streets as we know them.”
Decisions to close much-loved businesses, such as The Bon Vivant bar and restaurant in Edinburgh and Aberdeen’s famous Blue Lamp pub, underline just how bad things have become.
Finance Secretary Shona Robison has a difficult job to balance all the competing demands, but this simply must be a priority and, if she cannot see that, MSPs should do their best to force her hand.
Scottish Government ministers face many requests for special treatment and may well have become hardened to the typical arguments used to justify them. However, it should be clear that, this time at least, no one is crying wolf and these vital businesses really do need help.
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