Town Hall calls on government to extend business rates holiday and grants

The Town Hall is continuing to lobby the government for an extension to the holiday on business rates and for a sector-specific grants programme, as councillors bemoan any recovery for the local economy from lockdown as seeming to get “further and further away.”

In calls for a rolling programme of grants to be delivered over the course of the coming four to five months at least, Town Hall economy chief Cllr Guy Nicholson repeated warnings that the “push me pull you” effect of repeated lockdowns is doing immense harm to those businesses not permitted to open their doors, in particular the hospitality, leisure and arts sectors.

Skills chief Cllr Carole Williams has also warned of the twin challenges of the pandemic and Brexit throwing up “serious barriers” to employment in the coming years, with her service securing funding from the Greater London Authority to provide chromebooks for adult learners.

Cllr Guy Nicholson said: “Circumstances in the local economy and wider economy [since the autumn] have continued to change quite profoundly. As we lurch from lockdown to lockdown, there is a general pattern which seems to be about a very, very painful, slow and gradual reopening of the economy going on around us.

“It seems as if around us that people are beginning to work around Covid and accepting there is this virus out there , and put in place various practices that manage and control the spread of the virus, but enable some form of business to start opening and functioning again.

“Clearly there are still sectors in both the local and national economy which are falling outside of that. Hackney is host to a significant proportion of businesses that land in those sectors, which could be hospitality, leisure, the arts, culture, and the creative industries. These all rely on bringing together large numbers of people, and all are struggling as a result of the pandemic.”

According to Nicholson, the Town Hall took the recent cancellation of the Glastonbury festival for the second year running as a “very clear signal” that the borough’s theatres, clubs, and music venues are not going to be able to reopen before the summer, with the council now pledging to support and invest where it can for these sectors in “time, money and space.”

The economy chief said that the announcement had “focused the mind on what the council can do to help,” including a continuation of the business rates exemption initiative and lobbying for an extension of it beyond April as well as asking whether VAT should be lifted for certain areas of the economy as well.

Pointing to major supermarkets who had paid their business rates in a signal that they were not in need of subsidy and support, Nicholson argued that there are some sectors such as major food retail doing well, making the case for a sector-specific relief scheme to be introduced.

He added: “Quite clearly there are sectors that are just not permitted to open their doors at all to any form of business as things currently stand, and when you add in problems like supply chain issues and the capital required to forward finance an opening, this push me pull you approach to the hospitality sector has not been helpful for all of those involved in that sector.

“One minute you’re all opening up and the next you’re being told to close, but you’ve got a stock room filled with produce that you would have been selling and it just sits there rotting away. There are some serious implications and I think it is fairly apparent that the sector has had the stuffing knocked out of it.”

Meanwhile Williams’ work on helping residents develop their skills, with demand for the council’s apprenticeship growing year on year, comes against the background not just of disruption, but of a massive shift in the employment landscape in London as a result of Brexit, with councillors pointing to recent data from the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence suggesting that 700,000 EU citizens are leaving London.

Quizzed on how many of Hackney’s hospitality and pub businesses are going to be closing for good, Nicholson revealed that the council does not retain that information, but recognising the figures around the flight of EU citizens from the capital he added “there is clearly an effect beginning on the economy around not just the supply chains. Quite what impact it will have on Hackney are in agriculture and in the hospitality sector, specifically in the hotel industries.”

The economies chief was also quizzed by Skills, Economy & Growth scrutiny chair Cllr Mete Coban on the impact the serious cyberattack on the Town Hall’s systems had had on support for local business, a subject on which the council has been tightlipped due to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Data stolen in the attack was published on the dark web, earlier in the month, with multiple systems at the Town Hall left paralysed.

Nicholson confirmed that one of the services severely impacted by the attack had been the council’s access to information held on the system on people who pay business rates, though he stressed that there is “no cause for concern” on the loss of customers’ personal financial data.

He added: “What it does mean is that access to information to process things in some cases has been lost, while in other cases with more recent grant initiatives those details and data is held securely on another system.”

According to Nicholson, the administration has instructed officers to ensure that no business grant money will have to be returned to the Treasury, with all central government cash so far ensured to have “gone out the door” to Hackney businesses for the benefit of the local economy.