We’ve been hearing from various people within the events industry on the Chancellor’s recent budget.
Simon Richards, Finance Director of beam and Managing Director of Convenus commented
“We called upon the Chancellor to provide support more specifically appropriate to our industry and its issues and there was none. That highlights again the need for everyone to support the work of all those who are endeavouring to build within government awareness and understanding of our industry and its distinctive issues. The SIC codes are increasingly important in this.
“We specifically wanted help with recruiting more young people into the industry and to address staff shortages. We welcome the new concept of Returnerships and the expansion of Childcare provisions as both of these may well bring new people into our industry where they will be trained and also bring back experienced staff.
“However initiatives such as the Events Apprenticeships scheme are vital to the future of our industry but they need government seed money to kick start them and a re-think on how the levy works. It is disappointing that there isn’t any consideration in the Budget for this.”
Michael Begley, managing director of venuedirectory.com commented; “As a committed advocate of increasing sustainability, I was disappointed that there was so little new investment to help us save the planet and nothing that would directly encourage more sustainable behaviour in the our industry.
“While I welcome £20bn towards carbon capture, usage and storage, and the £8.8bn over five years towards city region sustainable transport, we need this to be nationwide. What we really need is more incentives to encourage best practice and change behaviours, at home and in business.”
The Meetings Industry Association’s (mia) chief executive Kerrin MacPhie, said: “The spring budget demonstrated a clear shift in the government’s focus, reflecting less emphasis on stability and instead the encouragement of investment and growth.
“While our sector is recovering positively from the pandemic, many will be disappointed to see no developments to the Energy Bill Relief Scheme. From our research we’re aware that over three-quarters of organisations within the sector have had to increase their prices by an average 13% to mitigate rising energy costs, and it appears that there will be no short-term support for our sector in managing this challenge.
“With tax breaks for the cultural and entertainment sectors and duty cuts for pubs, business meetings and events have been neglected from any sector-specific support once again. For an energy-intensive service sector, and one that has heavily burrowed into its financial reserves in recent years, incentives such as full capital expensing on investments into IT, plant and machinery are largely redundant.
“Despite the lack of financial support, it is encouraging to see that work is being done to increase the size of the UK workforce, supporting with the sector’s recruitment challenge. This has been well-documented since the EU Settlement Scheme came into place and we emerged from the pandemic, with more than half of organisations in the sector claiming to be understaffed earlier this year.
“As we await further information on the new measures announced, we will be calling for justification on the sector’s exclusion from sector-specific support.”
