Cost of living crisis is a threat to tourism dependent West

WHEN hard times hit, some parts of the country suffer more than others.

In the downturns of the 1970s, when roaring inflation was matched by soaring unemployment, areas reliant on declining heavy industry clearly suffered the most. Being out of work when prices are rising fast delivered a double whammy to many families.

The consequences weren’t only economic, they caused huge mental health pressures too.

As a new cost-of-living crisis bites, with an average £700 a year hike in energy bills, inflation on course to hit 9% later this year and a raft of tax rises all beginning to bite, the one bright spot is that the jobs scene looks much brighter.

Britain’s industrial landscape, blighted by restrictive trade union practices and poor management – and weighed down with too much public ownership – was a grim place during the downturns of 40 years ago and more.

Today there are still vacancies at the job centre and wages are rising in some sectors to take account of the competition among employers to get people to fill essential roles.

But while the dole queues stretched around the block back then, when the mines were closing and heavy industry taking a nosedive, this cost of living crisis could bring about difficulties in sectors that we rely on here in the South West.

There are fears that hospitality, which in the Westcountry often means pubs, restaurants, hotels and self-catering accommodation driven by the tourist trade, could be facing “fatal blows” as a result of the crisis.

With VAT on hospitality spending back up to 20%, national insurance hikes hitting family incomes and energy and petrol prices taking the the first bite out of any bread-winner’s wage packet, how much will be left to spend in the pub, the restaurant or on a staycation?

That must be the worry for the tourism-dependent South West as spring arrives and the region gears up for what many had hoped would be another booming staycation summer.

That’s not going to happen if the usual travellers to Devon and Cornwall from other parts of the UK can barely afford to fill up the car, heat their homes and pay their grocery bills. The fear was, at the beginning of the year, that with Covid restrictions relaxed holidaymakers would be flocking back abroad. The challenge, it was said, would be to persuade them to choose Devon or Cornwall again.

Now, however, with the unprecedented pressure on household incomes, holidays of any kind – UK or abroad – might well be off the agenda for many.

And that will put the South West in a similar position to those heavily industrialised areas which suffered so much in the deep and damaging depressions of the past, where jobs are lost – this time because bigspending customers stay away.

There are calls from all sides for the government to do more to offset the cost of living crisis. The Chancellor has failed to earn many friends with the measures he has taken so far, but he’s right, he can’t help everyone. But more measures to cushion the blow are vital.