There is a super pub near my home, Juniper Green’s Kinleith Mill, where the landlady regularly hosts community meetings, even when the bar is closed. Like a good pub should be, it is very much at the heart of the community.
But sadly, a combination of rising staff costs and business rates, not to mention an increased fee demanded by Sky to show sports, means the pub is no longer viable and when the current lease expires in April it will not be renewed.
It’s business as usual until then, and I can only hope circumstances will change and it can carry on, and there is an opportunity next week when the SNP’s finance secretary Shona Robison presents this year’s Scottish Government budget.
Like the increasingly discredited Labour government in Westminster, there is much shallow talk about prioritising growth but one way of putting her money where her mouth is would be to accept the demand by the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) for a permanent business rate discount for all retail, hospitality, and leisure premises.
In England, Labour has partially heeded a similar argument, introducing a 40 per cent discount for occupied retail, hospitality, and leisure premises for this financial year, up to £110,000 per business, and now five leading Business Improvement Districts, including Essential Edinburgh in the city centre, have backed the SRC’s call for a competitive reduction here.
For businesses like the Kinleith Mill it might be too late, but for hundreds of others it can’t come soon enough.
