Sainsbury’s boss calls on government to avoid heaping further costs on retailers with business rates reforms

Speaking after the grocery giant posted its Christmas trading update this morning, Roberts said the government’s decision to kick fundamental business rates reforms down the road to 2026 was another added cost for large retailers – on top of the changes to national insurance. 

“We’re looking at £140m of impact from national insurance for this business, alongside the changes to regulatory taxes with extended producer responsibility, and the potential for actually higher business rates, just at the point where we all expected business rates to be fundamentally reformed”.

Roberts went on to call business rates a “fundamentally difficult and unfair tax” on retail and urged the government to bring reforms forward to help larger retail businesses to help offset the added cost burdens from the Budget.

“All retailers would expect and ask the government to look at [business rates] urgently across the sector to make sure we don’t see the continued burden that it brings,” he said. “I think there’s an opportunity in this period ahead to look at that. It’s very important that any reforms apply to all retail stores, and not just the smaller ones”. 

The Sainsbury’s boss went on to say that failure to act by the government would hit “parts of the UK where supermarkets play a fundamental role in the heart of the community”.

Roberts’ calls echoed those of his Tesco counterpart Ken Murphy on Thursday, who called on the government to help grocers by taking “an approach that doesn’t add to costs” to help them manage the tax increases. 

“What the government has said is they want to ease the burden on smaller retailers and make the larger retailers pay for that. This would increase the burden on most of the full-line grocers. The discounters would escape out the back door but it’s the large grocery retailers like ourselves, like Sainsbury’s and Morrisons who would be impacted. 

“Our point around that is also, by the way, a lot of anchor tenants on high streets like Marks & Spencer or John Lewis or even ourselves would also be impacted. And those anchor tenants are often critical to maintaining the integrity of that high street because they draw the footfall in the first place.”