UK manufacturers call for business rates break to aid recovery

Manufacturers have called for a coronavirus business rates holiday similar to one granted to shops, bars and hotels, after activity in the sector plunged to the lowest point in at least 30 years during lockdown. 

With many factories still closed and people staying at home, manufacturing output has slumped to its worst performance on record during the second quarter of the year, according to a survey by the employers group Make UK.

Export and domestic orders sank to levels comparable with the depths of the financial crisis, it found, while only 12 in every 100 companies quizzed were operating at full capacity. 

 “The data shows the terrible state of manufacturing,” said Stephen Phipson, head of Make UK. “Orders in the aerospace industry have fallen off a cliff and the carmakers are really struggling. People are rapidly cancelling orders and it’s causing huge problems across the supply chain.”

The poll of 309 companies in May showed the balance for output at minus 56 per cent, the lowest in the survey’s three-decade history. It follows a one-fifth contraction in the UK economy in April, the largest since monthly records began in 1997.