The British Government’s new plan to assist with rising energy costs will lead to music venues closing their doors, the Music Venue Trust has declared.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a scheme earlier this week that will replace the current financial support Government offered to British businesses to help with energy bills, which ends in March. Rather than caping the unit cost of gas and electricity, the new scheme provides energy users with a discount on wholesale energy prices until the end of March 2024.
The “bizarre” scheme, according to a statement from Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd, is so vastly insufficient that it will result in permanent closure of venues. It’s also at odds with support offered to libraries and museums.
“We don't mean that the current venue operator will not be able to survive,” he explained. “We mean that whole buildings currently used for live music will become economically impossible to stage live music in, purely on the basis of the cost of the energy required.”
