Marcus Kittridge who runs Baristocrats and Seema Malhotra, Labour’s shadow Company and buyers minister (Image: Newsquest)

“It charges me £48 just to open my door, and £48 for each hour I stay open immediately after the initial 1.”

Marcus Kittridge – the owner of award-winning café Baristocats in Industrial Road has had to reduce the hours he opens simply because of the big raise in charges he is facing – which means his employees are operating fewer hours.

And he told Labour’s Shadow Minister for Company and Customers, Seema Malhotra, he could see his organization, and numerous other people like it, going beneath if points didn’t modify.

On a stop by to Swindon, Ms Malhotra heard about the enormous hike in power bills faced by Mr Kittridge who mentioned: “My power bills have gone up by 403 per cent, and I had to lock into a 3-year contract to even get that deal.

“We’ve had to reduce the hours we open, we applied to be open from 7.30am to 5pm, and now we close at 2pm.

“It charges me £48 just to open the door, and that is my fixed charges each hour, and I know from footfall when we are creating dollars – if you can not make that a great deal in an hour, it is not worth saying open.

“So, we’re all operating shorter hours.”

Swindon Advertiser:

Mr Kittridge told the MP for Feltham &amp Heston, accompanied by Labour’s South Swindon candidate Heidi Alexander, about other pressures such as a threshold for VAT at £85,000, which then sees a organization earning a penny over that paying VAT on its complete earnings.

He mentioned: “If points do not increase, if there is not assistance, I can see in five or ten years’ time, organization like this will be gone.

“And firms like this 1 add so a great deal worth to an location – we have collaborations with artists but also with other firms.

“If bricks and mortar firms are [not] supported, the town will develop into desolate.”

Ms Malhotra mentioned her celebration had plans to assist firms in the extended and brief term.

She mentioned: “We’ve named for a freeze on organization prices to assist, and also some of our plans to assist firms be greener and extra power effective would assist in the brief term.

“And a Labour government would have a overview of organization taxation – our method of taxation hasn’t kept pace with adjustments in our economy, so that requirements reform to level the playing field involving on the net firms and offline.

“We also would do extra to assistance households, simply because they are the consumers for modest firms and modest firms are the backbone of the economy – it all requirements appear at collectively as 1 piece.”