Our hospitality industries continue to struggle and sadly, things are getting worse.  Every week across the country, we are seeing pubs and restaurants closing and this is impacting local communities, as well as businesses and employment.

The higher cost of energy is well-documented, but overall inflation which remains higher in the UK than comparable countries, continues to have negative impacts for hospitality.  The ever-rising cost of living is squeezing people’s incomes and this is showing itself in less visits to pubs and restaurants, especially when they are having to charge more themselves just to try to stay afloat.    

We are now nine months into Labour’s tax on jobs, since their disastrous raising of employer’s national insurance and lowering of the levels at which it is payable.  This is having huge impacts on the bottom line and viability.  But what has really rang alarm bells in hospitality is huge increases in business rates that are due to come in this year.  This is likely to be the death knell for many more pubs, restaurants and high-street businesses.

For pubs only, it appears the government is now going to back-track to some degree on the huge business rate rises, which is at least something, but I suspect it will not be enough limiting of the rises, plus restaurants and other small retailers won’t be included.  To further make life harder for our pubs, the government raising of alcohol duty by 3.66% kicks in from the beginning of February, further adding to the cost of drinks.

The reality is that we have a Labour Government where none of its members have a business background, and they don’t understand the impact their tax policies have, while they try to raise more money to increase welfare spending.

I welcome Kemi Badenoch’s commitment that a future Conservative Government will abolish business rates for thousands of high street businesses, including hospitality, and her plan to slash energy costs for local shops and cut red tape.  We need to halt and then reverse the decline in our town centres and this needs to rise up the political agenda.

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

14th January 2026