Businesses in Suffolk call for stability from Chancellor's Spring Statement
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce the Spring Statement later today
Businesses in Suffolk are calling on the Chancellor to ensure small businesses get stability as part of her Spring Statement.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce her plans for the UK economy in the first Spring Statement under a Labour Government later today.
It's expected we will see further spending cuts to help the Treasury establish a foundation to grow.
It's also understood she will announce an increase in defence spending - but there's no word yet on measures for businesses.
Previously, she stated there would only be one budget a year, which would be held in autumn.
She said this is to "give families and businesses stability and certainty on tax and spending changes."
As a result, we're not expecting any major policy announcements today.
But people in Suffolk are apprehensive to hear what the announcement will bring, especially after recent weeks, when the government announced welfare reforms.
"It has been tough in the industry"
We spoke to Rob Orton, head brewer at the Briarbank Brewing Company in Ipswich.
He told us they're finding it difficult to keep up with all the changes:
"We're going to see an increase in minimum wage, so our staff bill is going to increase.
"We're gonna be paying more cash insurance contributions, and also the business rates relief is being reduced to 40%, which is one of, I think, the biggest things we need to be careful of. So we're going to see a huge increase in cost across everything essentially.
"It's just about trying to soak that up as much as we can without having to pass it directly on to the customer. People are already spending less per person, and increasing the price per pint isn't going to help them at all either."
"In an ideal world..."
We asked Rob what he would like to see from the announcement:
"We'd like to see some sort of stability in business rates. I think the Chancellor did promise in 2026 that they're going to permanently reduce business rates for the hospitality sector - that's quite a long way away for them to change their mind.
"So we will see, but something to make business rates a little bit fairer and gives small businesses more investment opportunities.
"...Any reduction beer duty does help as long as it's a significant amount.
"In an ideal world, it would be nice to see hospitality graced with a cut in VAT, which would significantly help counter these extra costs that are coming into place."
We asked what these changes would mean to the businesses if they came into effect.
He said: "We can make sure we keep our prices stable, and then we can hopefully put that extra savings back into the business.
"They're sadly going to be closing their doors"
We asked Rob what he thought would happen to the hospitality sector if the government doesn't address the changes he would like to see:
"Sadly, I think a lot of small businesses are gonna struggle to keep their doors open. It's already quite a difficult time for a lot of small hospitality venues.
"If they're suddenly having to fork out all of these costs, then unless they can offset that somewhere and people are happy to keep coming and spending extra to keep them alive, they're sadly going to be closing their doors."