Big ticket items are down and people are trading from premium goods to value goods and cutting back on spending now.
Colin Wilkinson, managing director of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association SLTA, said that pressure was felt throughout the hospitality sector and described the Bank of England's interest rate hike as very unwelcome. The industry benefited greatly from the VAT cut in the pandemic and Eat Out To Help Out was successful. We don't have that now, so we'd like to see a cut in VAT for the licensee hospitality sector and a complete review of business rates. He said the Scottish government has put in about 3 billion dollars of support for low paid families and we would call on the UK government to do something similar.
A Treasury spokesman said the UK government had stood behind the hospitality sector throughout the pandemic with a 400 billion package of economy-wide support that saved millions of jobs and provided a lifeline to thousands of night-time businesses up and down the country.