OKEHAMPTON shopkeepers have welcomed a raft of measures unveiled in the budget to help struggling high streets across the country.

Mark Turner, who owns Donald’s Menswear on Fore Street with his wife Gail, described Monday’s announcement from the Government as ‘a good budget for Okehampton’.

The business, in common with others on the high street, will receive a one third cut in business rates over two years from April next year. This will see their monthly £600 business rate bill slashed by £200 from April.

‘The business rates cut is good news for us, obviously, although it is only a two-year temporary measure,’ said Mr Turner. ‘It is a good budget for Okehampton generally. There’s also the news about the business rates for public conveniences being cut, so I would like to find out from West Devon Borough Council whether that will change their decision to hand them over to the parish councils. That’s important because it affects tourism.’

He added: ‘The infrastructure plan for revitalising high streets also looks interesting. We have massive problems with the roads here in Okehampton so if there’s a pot available to help with that it will be very welcome. Devon County Council says there is no money available to sort out the problems so if there’s a pot now available, will the councils – Okehampton Town, West Devon and Devon County – do something to try and get a bit of it?’

Mr Turner also welcomed proposals for a 2% tax on online sales by internet giants such as Amazon, proposed from April 2020.

‘It is not a level playing field at the moment because online companies don’t pay business rates at all,’ he said. ‘This is a start towards evening out the playing field.’

Jade Oliver-Deacon, who runs The Toy Shop in Red Lion Yard, also welcomed the Budget.

‘The announcement by the chancellor around business rates being cut by a third for the next two years will certainly have a positive effect on my business,’ she said.

‘I am sure that this will also have a huge benefit to all businesses in Okehampton and will hopefully provide a chance for new start-ups to open within the town. It may also provide an opportunity to allow established businesses to grow, which may in turn help the local economy and possibly provide job opportunities.’

Jean Swift, who runs Abstract & Teazles in the Red Lion Yard, agreed that the reduction in business rates would be good for small independent businesses generally, although she already qualified for business rate relief because of her location away from the high street.

The new rebate extends a discount to all businesses with a rateable value of less than £51,000.

‘This is going to help every small business so it is good news,’ she said. ‘They really do need to do something to help the high street.’

She also applauded the move to the online rivals to bricks and mortar street shops, such as Amazon, with a 2% tax on sales from next April.

‘That would be fantastic, because the likes of Amazon are getting away with murder at the moment,’ she said. ‘It is about time they clamped down on them.’

Okehampton’s MP Mel Stride said the budget announcement of £650- million to rejuvenate high streets was as important as the business rates rebate.

‘While keeping down business rates is important it will not on its own ensure high streets thrive,’ he said. ‘The way we shop is changing, with 18 per cent of our purchases now online so as well as lowering taxes we need to see high streets reinvent themselves.’

(See more from Mel Stride on the Budget below and on page 3).

Also announced in chancellor Philip Hammond’s Budget was an increase in the personal tax allowance threshold from £11,850 to £12,500, an increase in the National Living Wage from £7.83 to £8.21 an hour, an extra £160-million for counter-terrorism police and an extra £1-billion for armed forces, for cyber-capabilities and the UK’s new nuclear submarine programme.

The contribution of small companies to apprenticeship levy was reduced from 10% to 5%, there was confirmation of an extra £20.5-billion for the NHS over the next five years, a one-off ‘bonus’ to help schools buy ‘the little extras they need’ this year, a £30-billion package for England’s roads, including repairs to motorways and potholes, a 30% growth in infrastructure spending, £60-million for planting trees in England and £10-million to deal with abandoned waste sites, among other things.

He also announced plans to scrap business rates for all public toilets.

Mr Hammond said the era of austerity was ‘finally coming to an end’ and that 3.3-million more people were in work since 2010 and 800,000 more jobs were forecasted by 2022 and that wages growth was at its highest in nearly a decade.

From Okehampton’s point of view, there was another interesting nugget in the Budget, with the news that all public toilets will be exempt from business rates.

This appeared to have implications for the town and parish councils across West Devon borough who are currently being asked to take over the costs of running their public toilets from WDBC — or see them close down.

However, Cllr Robert Sampson, lead member for commercial services at WDBC, said: ‘The Government’s announcement that public toilets will no longer have to pay business rates is indeed welcome news. However, this will not come into effect until the 2020/21 financial year and therefore has very little impact on our current financial position.

‘West Devon Borough Council still feels that the best value for money may be found by transferring public toilets to town and parish councils and we will continue to work with them to try to achieve that and to keep as many facilities operating as possible.’

In Okehampton, the town council was proposing to take over the management of the Fairplace toilets from WDBC, but not the toilets in Market Street. These will close at the end of this financial year, West Devon Borough Council has said.