STATEMENT FROM THE BUSINESS VISITS & EVENTS PARTNERSHIP ON THE BUDGET

03 March 2021

London, March 03 2021: BVEP says Chancellor’s additional business support welcome but will need to understand how much of this helps event businesses.

BVEP welcomes the Chancellor’s announcements on the extension of the furlough scheme, support for the self-employed, the introduction of the Restart Grants, the extension of business rates relief and VAT.

However there’s a need to look more closely at the extent of these measures in so far as they apply to the Events Industry.

Previous announcements of similar measures have not always extended to event business and freelancers and as recent research show delivering additional payments to businesses through local authorities has been slow and in some cases non-existent.

Until the fine detail of the announcements become clear the Industry remains cautious in its appreciation of the impact on the measures in helping the Industry sustain its activities until the planned reopening in May & June.

The reopening roadmap does not mean an instant recovery for the Industry. As has been constantly emphasized events take months to plan and many will not return until well into the back end of 2021 and many more until 2022. On this basis event businesses will need more support than many other sector of the economy which can open reasonably immediately when permitted to do so.

Furthermore if social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions are to remain which impact capacities at events, this will significantly reduce profitability and be another burden on event businesses.

The BVEP will continue to press Government to recognize the specific plight of individual event businesses, freelancers and the self-employed working in the Events Industry during the recovery period and look for more targeted support.

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