Small South Yorkshire breweries 'may struggle to survive' cut to beer duty relief
A Sheffield MP's worried some might go out of business
It's claimed the government's kicking independent South Yorkshire breweries while they're down by cutting access to beer duty relief.
The government's planning to reduce the threshold at which small brewers can access Small Brewers Relief, which helps reduce the amount of tax they pay on their products.
But Sheffield Hallam MP Olivia Blake's worried it'll see some in the city going out of business - she's tabled a motion in Parliament calling for a rethink on the changes:
“Covid-19 is having a huge impact on small breweries in Hallam and across the country. Right now sales have fallen by 80% and two small breweries are going out of business every week.
"But at this critical time, when small breweries so desperately need more support, the government is proposing the opposite - cuts, which will threaten the whole industry.
"I have tabled a Parliamentary Motion, to call on the government to rethink this damaging plan, and am working with breweries in my constituency as well as national campaign groups to hold the government to account over this.”
Some breweries argue the Small Brewers Relief needs to be adapted as the market has changed since it was introduced, and that the changes announced by the government won't affect that many businesses.
But Nick Law, who's a brewery consultant in Sheffield, says it's come at the worst possible time:
"It's a huge lifeline because cask beer doesn't make that much money and it's hard to sell cask beer for a premium price. So to have that taken from you as a smaller brewer it's going to make it very difficult indeed to make a profit.
"At a time when jobs are pretty scarce, because people are losing jobs left right and centre because of the pandmic, it just makes no sense to be introducing this now. It's just going to have an adverse effect on a sector which is under a tremendous amount of strain already."
A HM Treasury spokesperson said:
“After extensive consultation on Small Brewers’ Relief, we’ve taken the decision to reform the way the relief works to help more businesses in the sector grow.
"Over 80% of businesses will be unaffected by these changes and we’re consulting with industry on technical design of the reforms.”
Emma McClarkin, Chief Executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, said:
“Following an extensive review that proposed important changes to Small Brewer’s Relief, we welcome the Government’s technical consultation to move this forward and build on the success of the existing scheme.
"We hope the technical consultation will now provide a platform and a revised Small Brewer’s Relief formula that supports growth for brewers of all sizes.”