Downtown Monthly
Words by:
Ann Tonks Managing Director Opus
Is Hospitality a scape goat? Our country is in an endless cycle of reaction rather than planning. Our hospitality venues are buffeted by ‘restriction creep’ - momentum begins to build only to be stopped by further restrictions that are poorly thought through and are causing more harm than good. The impact of the PM’s announcement this week that Birmingham is being thrust into Tier 2 is devastating to the city and to our hospitality industry. We are going backwards. We need a robust, logical strategy for re-opening the economy with a clearly communicated plan. This announcement in Parliament did not accomplish that. The lack of evidence-based restrictions that target hospitality cause huge frustration and uncertainty. We challenge the government to produce evidence that restaurants in Birmingham are spreading the virus. The majority of hospitality venues have been superb at compliance, but are now the victims of government failures. The lockdown was
supposed to buy us time to get the basics right. Emerging from total lockdown was always going to lead to greater risk of spread and that’s where a robust track and trace system should have come in. As a result of being in Tier 2, Opus estimates we will immediately witness a decline of at least 60% of our bookings; single households do not account for that much of our business. This will be true of many of our colleagues across the city. The overall effect on sales means our turnover will be at best 20% of normal, pre-Covid levels. Staff working hours will have to be radically reduced. With no further financial help from the Treasury, there
will be huge redundancies and restaurant closures. Even two weeks as a Tier 2 city is financially unviable. Treasury support must come with these devastating and ill thought through restrictions. It is financially better to be forced to close than to try and stay open; at least Treasury support is there for complete closures, not so for trying courageously to carry on. We urgently need the following Treasury support: 1. Return to flexible furlough (the JSS is not fit for purpose as it is dependent on turnover that is growing, not contracting);
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