'We do not need any more restaurants' - hospitality sector responds angrily to 'disgusting' comments made by Government advisor
Incendiary comments made by one of the Government’s most senior business advisors has tonight drawn scathing criticism from those impacted - namely the already squeezed-to-breaking-point hospitality sector.
Alexandra Depledge was in conversation with a journalist at the sister title of The Yorkshire Post - Insider Media - when she was pressed on the state of the economy. Drawn on where the country should focus its efforts in a bid to ensure success, she said: “We do not need any more restaurants. I’m not anti-hospitality but that’s not where my efforts are.”
Depledge, who hails from Bradford, also said: “It’s quite incredulous that people are agog that taxes have gone up. You don’t inject the level of support into an economy that we did during Covid and not expect that something has to give.”
She also said that turning to spouters of rhetoric who claim to have easy answers, namechecking Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn in the process, was ‘misguided and dangerous.’
Now, the outspoken founder of Resi, an architectural service in the UK that helps homeowners to improve their property, has come in for fierce criticism.
Night time economy tsar and nightclub owner Sacha Lord said: “I think it’s disgusting. At least she [Depledge] has finally admitted that she/the Government have no interest in hospitality – the UK’s fifth biggest sector, the third largest employer.”
Posting his ire on social media platform X, Mr Lord said those reading his post would feel their ‘blood boil.’ He quickly received a response from revered chef, Michel Roux Jr who, true to form, was not shy in offering his own opinion on decisions made by this Government and its advisers. He said, simply: “They’re really not very clever.”
This latest blow, chiefly to publicans and restaurateurs, comes a month after The Yorkshire Post produced an exclusive deep-dive piece of analysis into the pressures facing the hospitality sector. Tommy Banks, who runs the Michelin-starred Black Swan in Oldstead and the Abbey in Byland, then told this newspaper that hospitality was already at crisis point. These latest comments will likely only further cement the view of Mr Banks.
At the heart of Ms Depledge’s thinking was that SMEs in this country are risk averse, suggesting that in order for real growth to be realised, British investors must seek to replicate the ambition of their Silicon Valley counterparts who would not hesitate to ‘take bets’ on edgy tech start-ups and fledgling digital disrupters.
The Yorkshire Post has sought further comment from those businesses towards whom these comments have been directed. More will follow…