He even looks a little like Hercule Poirot, but now the owner of the luxury hotel that inspired two of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels admits that his little grey cells can’t prevent the Chancellor’s business rates ‘assault’ from forcing him to cut back on hiring.
Giles Fuchs, who runs the Burgh Island Hotel in Devon, criticised Rachel Reeves’ reported plan to offer help to just pubs after outrage over her disastrous reforms.
Many hotels, cafes and shops all stand to see their business rates go up from April – despite Labour’s pledge to ease the burden of the loathed property-value based tax.
Fuchs, whose art deco hotel and its island setting inspired Christie’s thriller And Then There Were None, said the industry was also being affected by other rising costs, such as higher wages and energy bills.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The whole hospitality sector is in the same boat. Staff costs, business rates, utility costs are the same in pubs, restaurants and hotels.’
Christie wrote Evil Under The Sun at Burgh Island Hotel, and a 2001 TV adaptation of the novel starring David Suchet as the Belgian detective Poirot was filmed there.
Testing everyone’s little grey cells: The owner of the Burgh Island Hotel in Devon, which inspired the Poirot novels, has criticised Rachel Reeves
Voicing concern: Burgh Island Hotel owner Giles Fuchs
Guests at the hotel, reachable at high tide by sea tractor, include The Beatles, French dancer and singer Josephine Baker and playwright Noel Coward.
Fuchs said: ‘We’re lucky we have an iconic hotel on an island, we are full and thriving. Even so, we are looking to not employ people where before we would have done.’
Labour was effectively ‘taking money out of the hard-working person’s pocket’, he added.
His comments come as the backlash mounts over Reeves’ botched business rates reforms, which will result in many firms’ bills increasing.
The average business rates bill for hotels will rise 115 per cent over the next three years or a total of £205,200 over that period according to trade body UK Hospitality – making the sector one of the hardest hit.
The Chancellor has now signalled that she will offer rate relief to pubs, after a campaign from publicans that has seen Labour MPs barred from many establishments.
But bricks-and-mortar businesses say this must be extended to other firms.
In her Budget, the Chancellor said Covid-era discounts for retail, leisure and hospitality firms would be phased out.
She did cut the so-called ‘multiplier’ used to calculate business rates. But with soaring valuations – in part due to a rebound in trading after the pandemic – it means business rates bills are rising rather than falling.
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