THE hospitality industry is going through “carnage” and needs more government help, an event organised by the Daily Echo heard.

The chancellor’s grants for closed businesses fall way short of covering their costs, an online “round table” event in partnership with NatWest was told.

Paul Kinvig, chief operating officer of Bournemouth Town Centre Business Improvement District, said: “It’s been carnage. Hospitality was one of the first to close and will essentially be the last to open.”

He said hospitality was a lifeline for the local economy and that “the challenges these businesses face has been immense.”

“It’s not just the individual businesses like the hotels or the restaurants or the bars. That closure and that restriction of their activity hits the supply chain and often that’s forgotten about. There are huge amounts of jobs that depend on that supply network into the hospitality sector,” he said.

Rosie Radwell, managing director of the family-owned Marsham Court Hotel, said furlough was not covering the costs of keeping jobs going and that the current five per cent VAT rate was no help when the business was shut.

“We’ve been given a £9,000 grant. My outgoings are £40,000 a month while being forced to close,” she said.

“I can’t stop the insurance, which is £6,500 a month. To have somebody on the property 24/7 to not invalidate my insurance costs me another £7,000. I can’t stop the water testing, the fire system, all these quarterly charges that I’ve got going on and all this is just mounting up. All we’ve got is a CBIL (coronavirus business interruption loan) which is putting me more and more into debt,” she said.

Mark Cribb, owner of Bournemouth’s Urban Guild venues and host of the podcast Humans of Hospitality, said: “I really hope the government realise how important Easter is for us. I get the challenge of reopening for Easter, because if all of a sudden you let everybody start to travel, clearly that could be detrimental, but if you’re not going to allow us to open, let’s be realistic about some of the support that’s available.

“We are getting grants this time but we only traded for nine weeks of the year so far. We’ve only got two months left of this year and so far we’ve only traded for nine weeks unrestricted. You can’t count December because December was rubbish with the restrictions in place.”

He added: “I spend about half a million pounds a year on taxes if you look at VAT, national insurance and all that sort of stuff. Up until about two weeks ago, I’d had £3,000 so I pay half a million a year in taxes and I’ve had three grand back. That’s not the government being super-generous.”

Philippa Goodwin, finance director of the Christchurch-based Hoburne Group of holiday parks, said income from food, beverages and entertainments had “really suffered”, but was “slightly subsidised” by areas such as holiday home sales. “In terms of the government support it’s somewhat lacking at the moment. The grants that we’ve been able to claim this time round are pathetic,” she said.

“Our costs are still high. Furlough has been great but we’ve got probably about 800 people across our business and it’s quite complicated in terms of weekly variable pay. The furlough claim is hugely complex but it certainly has helped us keep people employed.”

James Croker, chairman of Poole BID, said public sector bodies could be slow to respond to calls for reform. He added: “I agree that we need to protect life but it’s time now support businesses by reflecting a little bit of humanity and listening and I don’t see the institutions doing that.”

Mairead Taylor, NatWest’s director of corporate and commercial banking in Dorset and Southampton, welcomed the chance to listen to businesses at the event. “We’ve got a huge leisure part of our business based in Dorset. I have regular updates from my leisure relationship managers but it’s a great opportunity to hear from you directly,” she said.