In The Wasteland, TS Eliot wrote that April is the cruellest month. Something tells me JG Brown and AM Darling studied it in their formative years.

With property and people being retailers’ biggest operating costs, Wednesday certainly wasn’t a day to celebrate. April 1 was the day this year’s whopping business rates increase came in and exactly a year since empty property rates relief disappeared.

It was also the day VAT became chargeable on the wages of any agency temporary staff being used, the 10th birthday of the national minimum wage and even the day the TV licence went up.

BBC funding is a subject for another magazine, but it shocks me that the Government is happy to divvy up loan guarantees for car makers and buy up banks while assuming hard-pressed retailers can take bigger burdens without effect. I sometimes wonder who the April fools are.

Let’s be clear, we’re not asking for handouts, but we don’t want heavier handicaps either.

We’ve calculated Government proposals will push retailers’ business rates bills up to £7bn by 2011. This is a massive £1.6bn increase on last year – equivalent to the average salaries of more than 100,000 retail employees.

The increase from April 1 is 5 per cent. The latest Retail Prices Index inflation was just 0 per cent and domestic council tax bills are typically going up by 0 to 3 per cent. It is unjustifiable and the Chancellor can still abandon it. Meanwhile, the battle continues over the impact of rates revaluation from April next year.

Originally, the minimum wage was meant to set a basic floor for pay. Last year BRC evidence helped achieve a relatively modest, near-inflation increase. But today’s adult minimum wage is still 59 per cent higher than in 1999. It’s risen by a third more than overall average earnings and twice the percentage for retail.

In our submission this year we stressed that employment makes up 40 per cent of retail costs. Retailers consistently tell me big increases undermine their ability to retain and create jobs as well as squeezing pay differentials, making it harder to reward extra skills and responsibility. Just the other week, unemployment topped 2 million for the first time since summer 1997.

It shocks me the government is happy to buy up banks, assuming retailers can take bigger burdens

During the Blair years there always seemed to be a squabble between the Prime Minister and Chancellor over who announced the new figure – would it be saved for the budget or revealed before?

This year’s budget is three weeks away but if retailers are to maintain let alone increase job opportunities, this October’s increase can’t be anywhere near the TUC’s 6 per cent fantasy figure. It must be no more than 1.5 per cent. 

By the way, thanks to last year’s budget, April 1 was also the day duty on petrol, diesel and LPG went up. Perhaps that made it All Fuels Day.

  • Stephen Robertson is the director-general of the British retail consortium