Hair salons forced to trim younger stylists after tax hikes
Salon owners have warned that the sector is the ‘toughest it’s ever been’ due to rising employment costs after Labour’s tax raids.
They also say its traditional role of offering young people first jobs sweeping up hair or learning as an apprentice is in peril.
After wage and business rates rises hit the sector this year, it is warning it cannot continue to soak up higher costs for much longer.
Jobs for young people are set to be ‘the first to go’ as it is now so costly to employ them.
Hellen Ward, who runs a salon with her husband that has styled the Princess of Wales’s hair, said: ‘The biggest concern is we are very labour intensive, that’s very difficult for us. The first jobs to go will be for trainees as they don’t produce income and the cost has become very expensive to bear. Everyone is concerned.’
The warnings came as the Resolution Foundation think tank said the UK faced a ‘crisis’ in youth jobs. The number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets) stands at almost 1 million, its highest level in over a decade.
Cutting back: Salon owners have warned that the sector is the ‘toughest it’s ever been’ due to rising employment costs after Labour’s tax raids
Ward, who has run Hair & Metrospa in Sloane Square, West London, since 1992, with clients including Elizabeth Hurley, said 55 per cent of its income goes on paying staff, the cost of which has risen because of minimum wage and National Insurance Contribution increases. And its business rates bill has gone from £6,000 to £11,000 a month.
‘We are frustrated. You have big corporations not paying tax,’ adding the Government should be ‘fishing out of the same pond’.
‘They can’t keep hammering small firms. We, as a sector, are concerned that we will no longer be able to employ apprentices.’
Oliver Blackaby, who has cut hours and staff and apprentice numbers at his salon in Hove, East Sussex, agreed saying: ‘It’s the toughest it’s ever been.’
Dom Capel, co-owner of Lara Johnson Lifestyle salon, Cardiff, also said it was ‘extremely difficult’ to employ young people through apprenticeships and that many college leavers were ‘not yet employable due to the level of the minimum wage, National Insurance Contributions, and a lack of real-world experience’.
Apprenticeships have ‘been the backbone of hairdressing’, he said but salons were cutting jobs or moving from employed models.
‘We have had to reduce the hours for younger team members still building their client base. Though essential to the future of our business, they are sadly being squeezed out by rising costs.’
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