Industry reacts to the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget

The fish and chip industry has been left disappointed though not surprised at the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget, which offered little support for the sector.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves described her plan as a budget “for a fairer, stronger and more secure Britain,” but delivered only one notable concession for hospitality: a permanent reduction in business rates for more than 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties. The measure will be funded by higher rates on properties valued at £500,000 or more, including warehouses operated by major online retailers.

Absent from the budget were three of the industry’s key asks – a cut to VAT, targeted relief on energy costs, and to reduce or reform employer National Insurance contributions. 

Operators now also face higher wage pressures after the government confirmed that the National Living Wage will rise to £12.71, up 4.1%. Pay for 18 to 20-year-olds will also increase by 8.5% to £10.85. In a more positive move, training for apprentices under 25 will become completely free for small and medium-sized businesses.

Andrew Crook, president of the NFFF, said the budget fails to promote growth, adding: “We’ve got a sector here that can provide growth and provide jobs. I’ve had meetings recently with the DWP about getting people back to work. They’re not going into tech jobs and programming jobs, they’re going to come into industries like hospitality. But unfortunately, the way things are, people are cutting back their teams and their operational hours, and I think after this Budget, that will probably continue.”

While he welcomed support for apprentices and higher wages for staff, with operators forced to make adjustments, he threw doubt on whether either was helpful, adding: “It’s right that people are paid well, they work hard in our sector, but we’ve got to be able to afford it. If people are shrinking hours, someone might be getting paid more per hour, but if they have less hours they might not be better off. And it makes it more difficult to operate a business because you’ve got fewer team members and you’ve got less flexibility if you reduce your trading hours. Knowing businesses are cutting back, they’re not going to be taking apprentices on either.”

Graham Kennedy, owner of Bells Fish & Chips based in Durham in the Northeast of England, was equally despondent, adding: “It’s disappointing, but as expected. The government just haven’t been radical and they needed to be. With the younger wage limit going up in particular, it is going to make us think twice about whether to employ those people, because it can take them a couple of years to get going. So it’s actually preventative.”

Cem Oktem, who owns four chip shops in Lancashire, including Packet Bridge and Westgate Fish & Chips, said he wasn’t expecting anything positive ahead of the budget. He comments: “The wage increase was always inevitable – Labour said they were going to do it – but at least it’s not as high a percentage as it has been over the last few years.” 

He believes putting up the minimum wage doesn’t work, adding: “All that does is push up the cost of everything else. What the government needs to do is bring the minimum wage down, and then the threshold of the tax-free allowance should be increased to £20,000. That’s never been increased in as long as I’ve been earning money.

“There’s no incentive in this Budget for anybody to do well or get on. The government is not supporting business in any way, shape or form.”

Mark Drummond, owner of Towngate Fisheries in Idle, Bradford, welcomed the fact there were no more taxes directly on businesses. He said: “VAT didn’t increase and National Insurance didn’t increase any further so there were no direct hits, but there was also nothing really to help businesses either.”

He was more critical of the measures affecting business owners personally and added: “The Chancellor talks about hard working people and working families, but clearly doesn’t see small business owners in that category, because we have had an income tax rise if you pay yourself by dividend, because dividend tax rates are going up by 2%. If you’ve got savings, savings interest tax is going up by 2% so successful business people that have got something put aside for a rainy day are taxed even more on that.”

Mark did, however, see one silver lining: that increased spending power among lower income households could at least help keep tills “ticking over”. He added: “For a lot of takeaways, much of their trade comes from people on minimum wage, low income or on benefits like Universal Credit. So the one help we indirectly are getting is our customers will hopefully have more spending power and that should at least help keep volumes.”

In light of the budget, NFFF president Andrew Crook has called for greater representation for the industry around the table when it comes to advising on the issues that matter, adding: “The government needs to talk to us more. They think they’re getting the right information, but they’re not. There’s no representation on the Hospitality Sector Council from independent takeaways, it’s mainly the big chains, and there really needs to be, because we are big employers.”

Other key features of the Budget include:

Maintaining personal tax thresholds and the National Insurance contributions (NICs) secondary threshold from 2028 until 2031 – a year longer than anticipated. 

Capping NICs relief on salary sacrifice into pension schemes to the first £2,000 of pension contributions per person from 2029.

Raising taxes on property, dividend and savings income, reflecting the fact that income from those sources faces no equivalent of National Insurance that employees pay.

A new tax for electric vehicles from April 2028 which will equal £0.03 per mile for electric cars and £0.015 per mile for plug-in hybrid cars.

An extension of the 5p cut to fuel duty until September 2026.

 The two-child cap on means-tested benefits will be lifted.