Last orders as the local goes into lockdown
looking after the 17 people who work for us. A few of them are part-time students – they know when we start to struggle financially, it becomes a bit of
KEN Hamilton, co-owner of The Thornwood Bar, closed up yesterday following the Government’s advice.
The venue, in Glasgow’s West End, has 17 full and part-time staff.
Mr Hamilton, 65, said he was keeping on his full-time staff but he did not know how long he would be able to keep paying their wages.
He said: ‘What the Chancellor has produced is very welcome.
‘The prospect of no business rates for a year and additional grants will be, hopefully, enough to see us through and to make us look to the future fairly confidently rather than real anxiety, which is where we were yesterday.
‘We’re assuming the Scottish Government will be following the lead from the Chancellor in the coming days.’
He added: ‘Our responsibility a dilemma. For our full-time staff, it’s their only source of income. To be honest, offering them sick pay at around £9 a week would be wholly inadequate and almost insulting, so that’s not a route we’re going to go down.
‘We’re offering as much support as we can for those individuals for as long as we can, but that’s not sustainable.
‘A 12-week close-down, which is being suggested in some quarters, would be enough to put the business under if we attempted to maintain people’s income throughout that period.’
A knock-on effect of the bar closure is the impact on other local firms.
Mr Hamilton said: ‘We make a point of supporting local business but inevitably they’re going to be hit as well – the ripple effect is quite significant because we’ve cancelled all of our orders.’