PRESS PAUSE: #NATIONALTIMEOUT

Hospitality businesses, having been the first and hardest hit by the virus, will also be the last allowed to re-open.

Without some extraordinary next measures, we estimate that more than half of hospitality businesses and as many as 2 million jobs will not survive.

The #NationalTimeOut allows the whole hospitality industry to press pause for 9 months. It will:

🍺Push back the next 9 months/three quarters of rent (April-December), so that nobody pays anything until Q1 2021, when rental payments start as normal again. A 9 month #NationalRentFree.

🍺Allow the landlord to extend each corresponding lease by 9 months so that those payments aren't lost, just postponed.

🍺Enable the same push back for landlords on the next 9 months of their loan repayments, to help them bridge the cashflow gap from three quarters of no rent (with the debt secured on premises benefiting from the rent postponement).

🍺Include other protections and support for landlords, for example enhanced access to the Coronavirus Business Intervention Loan Scheme (CBILS); continued service charge and insurance payments so that premises can be maintained/safeguarded, and preventing penalties for postponed payment.

The #NationalTimeOut will apply only to those businesses that have been forced to close by Government order, will be last to reopen and will take the longest to get back to any kind of normal – hospitality and leisure.

On 31 January 2021, we press play and rental payments start as normal again.
It’s a simple solution, allowing businesses to work through the next 9 months towards a bounce back, without the need for another taxpayer handout.