Survey Reveals 75% Of Shops Will Have To Cut Jobs And Staff Hours

Following on from yesterdays blog and the grim news that many hospitality firms are likely to have to cut jobs in the near future, another survey, this time by industry body Retail NI, has revealed that, of the shops surveyed in Northern Ireland, 75% of them are going to be cutting jobs and reducing staff hours in their stores.

The reasons they give for such drastic action is that they are concerned about rising salary costs, with the forthcoming increase in the national minimum wage, allied to rising National Insurance costs. There are some quite startling figures in the survey. For instance the average store claims that it will have to pay out an extra £90,000 in the next 12 months to cover the increases in the minimum wage and National Insurance contributions.

A Call To Action For Government

The vast majority of these businesses blame the Executive in Stormont for not doing enough to support them. Here is what Retail NI chief executive Glyn Roberts said about these results in an article on the Belfast Newsletter website:

“This is a call to action for government at all levels,” said Roberts, “to address the ongoing perfect storm of increased business costs, which will result in businesses closing, workers losing their jobs, scale-up plans being cancelled and economic stagnation.

“Retail NI is not focusing on the problems, but on the practical solutions to this crisis.

“Our five-point plan includes cost-effective and deliverable measures the Executive could take to alleviate some of the burden of this crisis.”

A Need To Heavily Reform Business Taxes

And here are some details of the Retail NI plans as copied from the same article. It says that:

‘One major plank of the industry body’s programme involves heavily reforming business taxes, including a rates holiday for shops that suffer major financial losses due to disruption from streets being rebuilt by the public sector or dug up by utility firms.

‘Rates reforms could also include discounts for firms investing in expanding their business, Retail NI suggests, as well as increasing taxes on very large out-of-town superstores and funnelling the resulting cash into town centre street improvements.

‘The body wants to see Stormont’s small business rate relief scheme overhauled to give independent retailers, plus leisure and hospitality operations, greater discounts on their bills.

‘The organisation also suggests getting courts to impose stiffer sentences on shoplifters, changing planning policy to prioritise town centre retail, and creating a new all-party forum on High Street stores that would have the ear of the government.

‘And it wants to see the Executive’s largely dormant High Street Task Force resurrected.

‘In 2022, the task force delivered a long-awaited five-year plan designed to save Northern Ireland’s shopping sector. Stormont still hasn’t acted on it, but Retail NI thinks it should be implemented in full.’

The retail sector is such an important part of the economy that the government needs to do its utmost to help these businesses stay solvent and to thrive so that they don’t have to lay off any staff.