The past 12 months have been disastrous for the UK’s hospitality sector. The turmoil and damage to lives and livelihoods has been catastrophic.
Businesses in our sector were hit first and hit hardest when the Prime Minister advised the public to stay away from pubs and restaurants in advance of the initial lockdown announcement last March. Since then, the vast majority have either been trading under the tyranny of the tiers system or unable to reopen at all.
Last year, total sector sales fell by a staggering 54%, a drop of over £71 billion versus 2019. That means we were responsible for one-third of the UK economy’s annual £215bn contraction. An extraordinary drop for a vital sector that, pre-Covid, employed 3.2 million people and accounted for 6% of GDP.
The sector awaits Monday’s roadmap from the Prime Minister hoping that we are given positive news that allows us to press ahead with reopening plans. The early rumours are worrying though, with the suggestion that hospitality will be restricted to opening on a limited basis in early May, with restrictions until July.
That is simply not quick enough for our businesses. We have already lost over 1m jobs in the past year, including those from our ailing supplier partners, and we still have over 1m workers furloughed. One in five businesses do not have enough cash to survive until the end of this month, never mind until May. A delay to May will cost billions in lost sales that will not be recouped.
We know that we can reopen safely from early April. This is not about arbitrary dates, it is where the data points. The Government has the capacity to get the top nine most vulnerable groups vaccinated by then, and infections will have fallen to extremely low levels based on their current trajectory. The Government should use this as its guide to business to set a trajectory for Easter onwards to allow businesses to plan, unleashing investment and employment across the nation. The industry will accept some restrictions to ensure safety but these need to be the right controls, with a clear plan to remove them as the data improves still further.
We opened safely last July, when vaccines had not even been developed and treatments were limited, and the country is in a much better place now. Weekly data published by PHE repeatedly shows that the leading drivers of infection are schools, workplaces and care homes. Hospitality barely registers, linked to just 2.7% of cases between July 9 and September 19.
Misguided claims that the Eat Out To Help Out scheme was responsible for driving up infection rates were based largely on a single report by the University of Warwick, now widely discredited, and disproved by other sources, including the Treasury itself. Hospitality has been unfairly singled out and a UKHospitality report published this week dispels the myth that going out to eat or drink is relatively unsafe.
When we do reopen, hospitality venues are in the best possible position to keep customers safe. Pubs, hotels and restaurants are very low risk due to the exceptional investment that these businesses have made in creating safe and Covid-secure environments – which are mostly absent from non-essential retail. Staff training and cleaning regimes have been heightened, test and trace schemes embraced and, in some cases, premises remodelled in order to provide maximum space and safety for customers. Hospitality venues are highly regulated and controlled environments, the ideal place for people to meet, relax and socialise safely as society emerges from the pandemic.
A delay in reopening will come at the cost of even more jobs and more business collapses. It doesn’t need to be like this. Hospitality can lead the economic recovery of the country and has a proven track record of doing so. After the 2008 economic crisis, one in six of all new jobs created in the UK were in hospitality. We can provide jobs and a bright future to people who have lost them, along with welcoming back millions of customers who are desperate for some relief and enjoyment after a miserable year. We can do all this safely, too. By opening up hospitality sooner rather than later we will play our part in getting the country back on its feet.
Kate Nicholls is the CEO of UKHospitality, Britain’s leading hospitality trade association.
— to www.telegraph.co.uk
