Let's Speak Up for Hospitality on Business Rates Proposals

Business News Wales

07-08-2025

The hospitality industry is facing an impending flashpoint that could determine whether or not some pubs, coffee shops, restaurants and even hotels are still open in Wales in a few months time.
UKHospitality Cymru, the leading trade body for a sector than still contributes £4 billion to the Welsh economy and employs more than 165,000 workers, is calling on all of our friends and colleagues across the Welsh business community to lend their support today.
What can you do? Just take a few minutes to respond to a Welsh Government consultation on proposed business rates changes which we believe will leave our premises across the nation in a parlous position.
The consultation closes on Tuesday August 12 2025.
We're asking for your help because Welsh hospitality businesses are now facing substantial and potentially damaging business rates hikes after the Welsh Government sidelined the sector in a new batch of rating plans.
UKHospitality Cymru is urging all hospitality businesses to sign up to our campaign and fight these plans.
Because we are bricks and mortar businesses, we have been paying an estimated three times as much as we should be if we were working within a truly equitable business rates system. As a sector, we have been left behind as the commercial climate has seen radical changes with out-of-town builds and many more people working online or away from town and city centre set ups.
In recent years this imbalance has been rectified by a set of specific sectoral annual rates reliefs of between 40 and 75 per cent – reliefs that recognised the true level of contributions our venues could afford.
However, now Welsh Government has proposed a new lower multiplier for our friends in retail only for 2026/27.
The new proposals, critically coupled with a cut off in business rates consequential funding for Wales from Westminster, mean that there will effectively be no support for Welsh hospitality businesses in 2026/27 unless the Welsh Government reverses its current proposed position.
That lack of support will mean a typical high street pub will be paying an extra £6,800 per year in business rates; a typical country hotel would see an increase of around £17,000 per year; and a city-centre hotel would see nearly £50,000 extra in costs. Some of Wales's finest accommodation attractions will see even bigger increases, damaging domestic, international and business tourism.
This could all be made worse still by revaluations taking place next year and which relate back to trading times that reflected periods just after reopening from Covid. They will force rates upwards and compound the difficulties created by the industry's exclusion from support in the new proposals.
Wherever you live and work, these are venues you will know well – where you meet colleagues or business contacts to discuss work, catch up with a friend for coffee, where you take relatives to celebrate and where you take the family and children to wind down after a working week.
They are community assets and keen commercial contributors that have battled and survived – just – the ravages of Covid, soaring energy and food inflation and steep National Insurance rises.
It is an irony that Welsh Government has prefaced these changes with claims that they will be a formula for protecting and rebuilding city centres. These enforced rate rises risk gutting the high street and devastating town centres. They will threaten the very existence of pubs, bars, hotels and restaurants across Wales.
You can see how important our businesses are just by looking around at their critical mass as you pass through your local shopping centre. In Cardiff, for example, besides the scores of hospitality businesses that populate the whole of city centre, you can travel along Westgate Street and see that every business on the town side is one of ours from the Angel Hotel to Wood Street.
How can stripping these businesses of their much-needed business rates support help this shopping centre to thrive?
So please do lend us your help. While the consultation deadline is, of course, very important, the campaign will definitely not stop there.
We urge all hospitality businesses to respond to the consultation to ensure your voice is heard. It's important to personalise your response with your own business experience. It doesn't need to be lengthy, just clear and reflective of your views.
To read more about the consultation visit this link.
Our members and team will keep up the pressure as long as this whole matter is to be considered – hopefully with your enthusiastic help.
UKHospitality Cymru membership is a community for like-minded businesses, all committed to shaping the future of the industry for the better. For more information on membership, please click here.