BAPC Leader Summer 2021

BAPC LEADER — SUMMER 2021 13 25 hours a week’s work, at the national living wage for a 16 to 24yr old currently on Universal Credit to work in your business for 6 months; the new Regional Business Rates Relief Scheme; and the renewed VAT Deferral Payment Scheme. The catch 22 The key issue for print though with the loans support is that taking out more debt makes this type of support less helpful, as the print work lost over the last year is gone for good, and so print businesses are often shy of repaying loans in the future as there will not be an excess of pent-up demand that will buoy other industries such as the home entertainment and electronics sector. At best work levels will return to normal levels following the disruption, but there will be no excess to make up debt repayments. This is why we have also articulated the need to Government for a fully means- tested grant system to support UK print businesses. We do not want handouts for businesses that were unstable before Covid, but we do need to preserve good, healthy and well-run businesses so they can continue to operate on the other side of the crisis. Our prediction is that by the end of 2022 as an industry we will lose around 1,000 - 1,500 businesses and around 20,000 - 25,000 jobs, which is of course part of the terrible and sad legacy from this crisis. The only way to mitigate this further would be for an assessment scheme for those businesses in crisis – due to debt accumulated through lack of earnings from the pandemic – and the provision of central Government grants to assist those with hope of recovery by bridging their finances and thus enabling them to retain their staff. This would be akin to a disaster relief grant, such as would be paid out to businesses destroyed by flood, storms or earthquakes. We at the BAPC will certainly continue making the case for this very strongly in the months to come. A clear case in point is articulated perfectly by this BAPC Member in London: “Currently we are still down only at about 30 to 35 percent of normal turnover. We had a solid business from walk in trade, so lots of bars, restaurants popping in for same day and next day work this completely disappeared in April, May and June as they were closed. We had held out hope October would see this really bounce back, but with the new rules in place and limiting groups to 6 this was another nail in the coffin. “We also have three hotels we produced regular work for two of them have not placed an order since March end one is closed until mid-September and the other opened late August, but does not need anything at the moment and the 3rd hotel is a new opening who was in the main only placing small orders. We also suffered from work from home as our largest client has 65 UK offices and they adopted WFH so the offices around the UK stopped ordering except for very small jobs.” What is clear is that while the Government’s actions have saved thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of jobs in our industry, they must look to the long-term and go further to sure up once healthy and productive businesses that have been critically damaged through no fault of their own. Q2: Please tell us what your business does Q5: Tell us which of these statements best applies to your situation in regard to redundancies that are connected to Covid-19 business disruption up to September 2021 Q7: What level of revenue have you lost over the last seven months? Q9: What impact has BREXIT specifically had on your business?