An artisan bakery owner who urged Andy Burnham to give the hospitality industry a "fighting chance" with the Budget told the Express: "They've done nothing."
Barbakan Deli in Chorlton, Greater Manchester, has been the heart of its community for the last 62 years but like many High Street firms has faced rising bills, despite turning over £2.3m a year.
Open letter goes viral
In an open letter to Andy Burnham last month – which went viral with 1m views in two days – owner Frankie Dyer, 38, said she had "no reserves left" with "taxes outweighing what you bring in" as the sector has "nowhere left to squeeze".
She added: "Since Covid, independent businesses like ours have dragged ourselves through crisis after crisis. Energy prices. Fuel costs. Food shortages. Inflation. Increasing wages. Pension contributions. Corporation Tax at 25%. Business rates. And then the enormous additional cost of the increase in Employer National Insurance (NI)."
Budget response disappoints
Ahead of the Budget, Frankie told the Express she hoped for a boost to the High Street with reductions in VAT and NI, or some of the 6,000 business owners who reached out to her over her letter "won't make it until Christmas". But instead she was offered a small boost on business rates and a 4p cut in gherkins.
She fumed: "I’m very disappointed with the budget. It completely disregards all the issues we are all facing. As an industry we feel completely shunned by the government and I fear for the future of hospitality. They said they would help the High Street and businesses like ours that are a part of the community and they’ve done nothing. We do sell gherkins but it's hardly a lifesaver is it – we're talking pennies. It's embarrassing!"
Impact on employment
Frankie told us that Labour – like many governments before – fail to grasp how vital small businesses like hers are to the UK economy. She said: "It's just totally unfair when we are the ones that are employing the most people in the country.
"We're training young people, providing all the joy in the community, getting up at five in the morning and going to bed at 10 o'clock at night, yet we're almost treated like criminals – meanwhile you've got people sat at home on more money. The NI for employers is an absolute killer for a Labour-impacted business like mine. I've got 50 staff. A lot of them are young people. My PAYE bill every month is just astronomical. It's not sustainable."
Barbakan Deli first opened in 1964 and Frankie's father Stefan Najduch, now 68 and retired, bought it in 1985 when it was originally just a small Polish bakery – Frankie bought it off her dad in 2021 after getting to know the business. The married mother-of-two recently opened a small 'grab and go' store in a quiet area of Wilmslow, Cheshire, with three staff - boosting local footfall – but said with bills soaring she could not expand anymore.
As well as a delicatessen they bake bread on site to supply their over 70 different wholesale customers, baking 600 dozen bagels alone every week, but her electricity bills are £7,000-a-month and gas is £5,000-a-quarter. Explaining what other business owners have told her, Frankie said: "Everyone just has the same issues. There's no balance anymore - it's just too expensive to employ people.
"The running costs are too expensive. People are cutting down their opening hours, they're cutting down staff, they're thinking of ways to try and keep open without having to fork out the taxes and VAT, which is just basically impossible." Since her social media post Frankie has been on TV and invited to Parliament - now she's been invited down to Downing Street to hopefully meet Burnham before Christmas.
And she defiantly stressed: "It's really frustrating because the costs outweigh what's coming in but I won't be one of those businesses that folds. I won't."
