Supermarkets should never have been included in rates relief – they stayed open, and enjoyed a boom
Another day, another supermarket chief executive pleading that his company somehow deserves its business rates freebie because it’s had to suffer extra costs in “feeding the nation”. All that hand sanitiser, plus the burden of paying so many staff to shield at home, adds up, don’t you know?
Simon Roberts of Sainsbury’s offered other arguments: in the age of Amazon, the business rates system is unfair on bricks and mortar retailers. As if to reinforce his point, he unveiled plans to shut the doors permanently on 420 Argos standalone shops, with the potential loss of 3,500 jobs.
