UKHospitality: We need you to help with VAT’s the Problem

Seventy-five thousand people live in Crewe. Corby – unconnected to the trouser press – is home to 68,000 people. Windsor, where the trouser press was in fact invented, has 31,000 residents.

 

To get to a town with 100,000 people, you’ve got to go bigger – bigger than Chester or Wakefield, until you arrive at Lincoln, where 104,000 people live in what is a very lovely city for a weekend away. I offer these examples because if you can’t quite imagine a number like 100,000, picture the people of Lincoln.

 

This is the number of people who have signed the VAT’s the Problem petition, calling for VAT in hospitality to be cut to 10%. In less than three days, an entire Lincoln of people descended on the website like pigeons on a chip.

 

Not bad for a campaign that hasn’t really been properly launched yet.

 

Let me tell you what the campaign is and how we want you to help. Chef Tom Kerridge has pulled together a group of industry organisations, including us at UKHospitality, our friends at the British Institute of Innkeepers and the British Beer & Pub Association, to make a simple plan and a simple ask: that VAT in hospitality be cut to the same 10% you would pay in France, Spain or Italy.

 

Tom would say it’s not his campaign, it’s the whole sector’s – it’s yours. He wants to start a conversation with the country to let them know they are being charged twice the right amount of VAT. And he wants to tell them that fixing it will mean keeping their pub, hotel, restaurant or nightclub open – and get job creation moving again.

 

And he wants your help.

 

On 1 June we took the campaign to the industry, writing to people to get them to share the petition at VATstheProblem.co.uk with their teams and get ready for a nationwide push. Tom’s launch video (below) has been seen a million times.

 

We have seen so many people in hospitality share the petition with their teams and with their customers on social. We have already seen the prime minister challenged on it in Prime Minister’s Questions. It’s gone viral.

 

On 1 July we are going to go live to the whole country. We are making assets such as tent cards, beer mats and social media content, which you will be able to buy cheaply or download for free from the campaign website and put in your venue or on your socials. We already have a load of social assets there for you to use, and anyone who has signed the petition will be emailed when the rest is available. We are moving fast.

 

Tom and the team are asking you to throw your shoulder into this. Use the tent cards and the posters, use the beer mats, put the social content on your channels. If you don’t like ours, make your own and send people to VATstheProblem.co.uk.

 

Make videos where you talk to your customers in your own voice. Tell them how much you love hosting them and what a VAT cut would mean. Be proud to say #VATsTheProblem.

 

Let’s make sure that by the time schools are back in September, everyone in the country knows that #VATsTheProblem.

 

As Tom says, this starts with you.

 

Allen Simpson is the chief executive of UKHospitality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Tom Kerridge (@cheftomkerridge)