26 March 2025, 17:15

By Kate Nicholls OBE

Hospitality businesses will have sat down this lunchtime for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, hoping that the disastrous impacts of the looming cost increases facing them will have been heard and would be addressed.

Around 40 minutes later when the Chancellor sat down, they were left bitterly disappointed.

Today’s statement provided the Government with a chance to come forward with a clear plan for growth, which included a delay to the hugely damaging changes to employer National Insurance Contributions.

Instead, what we got was a missed opportunity for the Government to demonstrate that it had heeded the sector's concerns.

Those concerns had been communicated........

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