'It feels like we don't matter because we're normal people who work all our lives'

At the start of the week, many owners, chefs and managers at bars, restaurants and pubs across the country had hoped that they were finally on the cusp of some financial relief in the form of a VAT reduction from the government.

Businesses in the hospitality industry have been fighting for months now for the 20% rate of VAT to be reduced to 10%. In the wake of increasing business costs, wages, food prices and utility bills, it was argued the reduction was necessary in order to keep bars and restaurants open. But when Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Spring Budget on Wednesday, there was no mention of a VAT cut.

“I think maybe we’d gone into it with this misguided confidence that something was finally going to happen,” Tom McNeeney, Head Chef at The Oxford Pub in Rochdale, tells the M.E.N. “It just feels like such a kick in the teeth for us all.

READ MORE: 'There really is no glimmer of hope...' Greater Manchester's hospitality industry sends warning to Jeremy Hunt

Tom says that he, like many others in the industry, felt that a reduction in VAT was going to be announced in the Budget. He says he knows of businesses in Greater Manchester that were holding on that hope in order to make ends meet.

“A 10% cut wouldn’t necessarily save a lot of places, but it would have given them a fighting chance,” he explains. “There were a lot of people who were going to try to make that 10% cut work for them, it was their lifeline. Now they are really going to struggle. I think a lot of people just feel very exhausted with his government and the fact that no help is coming.”

Tom has worked alongside his family at The Oxford since it opened its doors back in 2013. He says he counts himself lucky in that he feels supported and ‘can