Half Of Northern Ireland Takeaways Could Face Closure

The stark warning that half of the takeaway businesses in Northern Ireland could face closure this winter has been made by the NI Takeaways’ Association, who believe that government intervention as soon as humanly possible is the only solution to the growing cost of doing business crisis.

60 Takeaways Have Already Closed

Over the last 6 weeks it has been claimed that 60 takeaways have already closed with the loss of over 600 jobs, and it would be a huge blow to the economy if many more went to the wall due to a lack of urgency from the government. A lack of intervention now will almost certainly cost us all more further down the line.

The issue of course is rising costs for businesses such as takeaways. Many of them are being quoted a 400% to 500% rise in their energy bills and this is quite unsustainable for them. This rise comes on top of the rise in other products and ingredients that they use, most of which have gone up over 10% recently. They cannot pass all these rises in costs on to their customers as they would simply not be able to afford them.

The Cookie Box Is Closing Its Stores

The Cookie Box has announced it is closing all its 8 stores with immediate effect, making all of their staff redundant. They have blamed the pressures on business for the closure, saying that they could not carry on trading for any longer. The Cookie Box specialised in cookies and milkshakes.

And in further news a distillery boss has been left aghast at receiving his latest electricity bill which totalled nearly £11,000. Gareth Irvine from the Copeland Distillery in Donaghadee was speaking to Belfast Live and he said:

“I was walking around turning off all the lights after reading it! I had said to my partner on Saturday morning that I had a feeling our electric bill will have skyrocketed so I went into work and there you are!

“It’s not great but what do you do these days? You just have to take it. The part that gets me is that they put it up and then say they’ll collect it by direct debit, seemingly without a care in the world.”

“Obviously as a distillery we use a lot of electricity so we’re used to our bills being around £6,000 or £7,000 a month on average but not just shy of £11,000.

“I assume it will go up again but if it increases by 15% or 20% that will be up to around £13,500. We are prepared for that but we also have to be realistic. We’re not going to throw good money away just to keep going.”

This is a snapshot of our country right now. Help is needed to alleviate the pressure on businesses and households at the earliest possible opportunity.