Takeaway restaurant forced to shut after energy bill jumped tenfold to £10,000
Business groups demand government support for small firms facing closure because of huge bill increases
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Your support makes all the difference.A takeaway restaurant is to shut after its energy bill increased tenfold this year to £10,000, leaving staff and owners devastated.
The Royal Crown Chinese takeaway in Aberdeen is one of thousands of small businesses being hammered by soaring energy bills which are not protected by a price cap as domestic customers are.
Owner Martin Tang was forced to shut up the shop which has served the local area for 40 years. He told the BBC: "Every time I turn on a burner to cook something, I'm losing money.
"This is enough to kill off my business.”
The Royal Crown’s bill jumped from around £1,000 to £4,000 earlier this year and supplier SSE warned it would hit £10,000 by winter.
"There's nothing I can do. Imagine me telling a customer their chicken curry is now going to be £28. There's just no way around it."
Mr Tang said: "That's the saddest thing I feel because I've been in the catering business for a long time, my family's been in this business for a long time.
"We tried to build up a good business and now it's in my hands.
"I'm basically looking at an impossible task."
Former employee Natalie Hood posted an emotional thread on Twitter, writing: “Lost my job when the shop shut down last night, today I’ve been put on garden leave from my office job too after just getting back on my feet after all my brain ops I’m absolutely gutted & now I’m completely giving up on life. How’s your Monday going?”
A spokeswoman for SSE, said: "As a responsible business, SSE Energy Solutions is committed to engaging with all customer queries.
"Our customer services team are working closely with the customer towards what we hope will be a satisfactory resolution."
The Federation of Small Businesses said an unprecedented number of businesses were seeing their costs rise.
“Many small businesses are finding it hard to stay afloat with spiralling operating costs and reporting energy bills mushrooming by four or five times in recent months,” said Martin McTague, National Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses.
“A record high 89 per cent of small firms told us their operating costs are up this year compared to last, citing utilities as one of the primary drivers of that increase.
“While households have rightly received help with their energy bills, small businesses don’t benefit from protections designed for domestic consumers, nor do they have the capacity of big businesses to secure deals, making utility bill inflation especially tricky to handle.”
The FSB is calling for more financial aid to help small businesses with energy costs.
Mr McTague added: “We need direct and immediate support from the Government: extending energy support issued via the council tax system to the rates system, direct help with bills for those small firms which don’t pay business rates, and cutting VAT on energy consumption will make a real difference in this space.”
The government is facing mounting criticism for not doing more to help UK households facing average annual energy bills of more than £4,200 next year.
On Monday, the Labour Party unveiled a £29bn plan that would see retail energy prices frozen at current rates. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his “fully-funded” plan to keep the cap at current levels throughout the winter would partly be covered by expanding the windfall tax imposed on oil and gas giants.
“Britain’s cost of living crisis is getting worse, leaving people scared about how they’ll get through the winter,” he said. “This is a national emergency. It needs strong leadership and urgent action.”
Closing the “absurd” loopholes in the windfall tax introduced in the spring by the chancellor at the time, Rishi Sunak, and backdating the levy to January, would raise £8bn, Labour said.
The rest of the price freeze would be paid for using the £14bn earmarked by the government for extra support to cover energy bill rises, and £7bn saved in debt interest payments through reduced inflation.
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