The strategy, which sets out a 10-year plan to boost investment and create skilled jobs, has been created to tackle high industrial electricity costs, enhance skills and increase access to talent, and remove planning barriers among other things.
Under the strategy, the energy bills of some companies would be cut by up to 25%, benefiting more than 7,000 businesses, but these do not include those in the hospitality sector.
Reacting to the Government’s plans, trade body UKHospitality described it as a ‘missed opportunity which will leave behind swathes of the UK’.
“Lowering energy bills for certain sectors is clear recognition from the Government that the energy market is broken and a major barrier to investment,” says Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality.
“We now need a clear roadmap and timeline for when the Government will fix the energy market for the rest of the economy.”
Nicholls points to figures from the Competition and Markets Authority published in 2016 that SMEs were paying 18% too much for energy, an overpayment of £500m per year. “Nine years on, that has only got worse, and a recent investigation by Ofgem found that hospitality businesses were specifically being treated unfairly, and even blacklisted, by some suppliers,” she says.
“This is not an industrial strategy that will deliver growth equally across the UK. In fact, by ignoring 70% of the economy it is at odds with the Government’s ambition to create jobs and help people into work.
“Once again, growth will be distributed unevenly and centred around small industrial clusters that have high barriers to access – hardly a recipe for driving social mobility.
“We were desperate to see a plan for hospitality and the high street, which together employs over 7 million people. We were disappointed.
“How can national renewal be properly delivered if 70% of the economy is excluded from the Government’s flagship plan for growth?”
Earlier this month the Government announced the launch of an emissions cutting trial that it says will help cut the energy bills of pubs, cafés, and restaurants.
Part of its Plan for Change, the initiative will offer more than 600 small and medium sized hospitality businesses free energy and carbon reduction assessments, delivered by Zero Carbon Services, to ‘cut energy costs, support productivity and boost growth’ and is expected to save the sector £3m on bills and reduce 2,700 tonnes of carbon emissions.