mia’s reaction to the Governments Spring budget comes via Louis Clark at Custard Communications…
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.”