The Retailer Winter 2018/19

NEWS FROM THE BRC Two Years of Stormont Stalemate

Aodhán Connolly is Director Director Northern Ireland Retail Consortium

Reaching two years without a sitting Assembly or Executive is an ignominious accolade. We, in Northern Ireland, have been falling behind our neighbours to the south and to the east on a range of issues that affect retail and the 90,000 people we employ as Northern Ireland’s largest private sector employer. There are those who will argue over who is to blame for the collapse of the Assembly as well as the abortive attempts at its resurrection. A blame culture is a huge part of the long standing political problems that have led to this impasse. Nomatter where the fault rests, the simple fact is that this stagnationmakes it harder to do business in Northern Ireland. In this past two years across the UK, we have seen the debate on business taxation drive forward, due in no small part to our colleagues at the British, Welsh and Scottish Retail Consortiums. Headway coming from the Barclay review in Scotland, such as three-year revaluations of business rates, is now being delivered and the same happening inWales and England. They have also set the poundage rate or multiplier for Scotland at 49p in the pound, while here we in NI have a poundage of up to 63p in the pound when both district and regional rates are collated. The fact that retail in Northern Ireland is 12% of the economy but pays almost a quarter of business rates is simply unsustainable. We also have no access to the millions of pounds that we are paying in to the Apprenticeship Levy which has become nomore than a tax. We need reform to allow us to remove barriers such as apprenticeships in NI only being delivered until the age of 25 or the length of time required. These barriers mean that the system and the Levy do not work for our industry. This is in stark comparison to Scotland, where not only is there a FlexibleWorkforce Development Fund but Levy payers can claimback £15,000 of their fees.

Both the reforms needed for business rates and for the Apprenticeship Levy could happen very quickly if we had our Assembly back up and running. But the stalemate is not just affecting the competitiveness of our industry. It could affect our frontline colleagues. According to the last British Retail ConsortiumCrime Survey, nearly 51 retail workers were injured every day in the UK. Attacks on retail workers are intolerable, that is why our sister organisations, the Scottish, Welsh and British Retail Consortia, have been supportive of legislation in their jurisdictions to protect workers. In Scotland, Daniel JohnsonMSP’s proposed Shopworker Protection Bill is calling for more to be done to protect vulnerable retail workers by creating a new statutory offence for abusing a worker carrying out actions required by Government (for example enforcing age-restricted sales such as alcoholic products). InWestminster there is a major push to ensure the OffensiveWeapons Bill provides to create a new offence for assaulting or threatening a retail colleague. What do we have in Northern Ireland? Nothing. No Assembly, no Executive, noMinister, and nomeans to ensure that retail workers here are afforded the same protection as in Great Britain. This is not to say that we in the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium have not been working diligently onmembers’ behalf. The lack of the Executive has made influencing policy muchmore complex than simply meeting withMinisters and Special Advisors. We have had to build up solid relationships with the permanent secretaries, directorate heads and lead officials across a range of government departments.

12 | winter 2019 | the retailer