Industry bodies urge local authorities to allocate Additional Restriction Grants to personal care

The British Beauty Council, along with the the British Association of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology (BABTAC), The National Hair & Beauty Federation (NHBF), the Hair & Barber Council, The Federation of Holistic Therapists (FHT) and the UK Spa Association, have written to every local authority in England to urge them to allocate their Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) funding to the personal care sector.

At the end of 2021, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, announced further financial support to help businesses impacted by the Omicron Covid-19 variant, including an additional £100m in ARGs via local authorities for England. Updated government guidance has since highlighted that personal care, including mobile and freelance businesses, are eligible to apply for the grants, which will be distributed until 31 March 2022.

In their letter, the UK’s leading organisations representing hair and barbering, beauty and wellness businesses and practitioners detail the importance of personal care businesses being given access to financial support via ARG funding.

“During the most recent wave of the virus and the changes in Government advice, the personal care sector has faced issues similar to other service based sectors such as hospitality and leisure. Each continue to deal with significant cancellations and staff shortages due to the current wave of the pandemic, with December, usually a crucial month for business earnings to counter the quieter early months of the following year, hit especially hard. Sadly however, despite being one of the larger contributors to the high street, we were not afforded similar additional targeted support by central government,” the letter reads.

It also notes that with personal care being a close contact service sector, personal care businesses do not have the ability to diversify to offer other services, unlike sectors such as retail, food and education.

“As part of the eligibility criteria, we would also stress that the personal care sector is made up of 96% microbusinesses (businesses with less than 10 employees). We would therefore implore you to be mindful of this when setting criteria for the types of businesses that qualify, as by using the employment definition of an SME (10-249 employees) the vast majority of the hair and barbering, beauty and sector would be excluded,” the letter continues.

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The organisations behind the letter have also written to the Minister for Small Business, Paul Scully MP, asking for his help to ensure that the personal care sector is not overlooked by councils for the ARG funding.

These letters follow a BABTAC survey conducted in December 2021, to discover the effect of the Omicron variant on the beauty industry. It found that over 97% of members had faced cancellations and that 40% lost between 20-49% of their revenue, while a further quarter lost between 50-75%.