John Penrose, MP for Weston-super-Mare and Minister for Tourism & Heritage

Weston-super-Mare MP and Tourism & Heritage Minister John Penrose is celebrating this month after successfully safeguarding tax breaks for the town’s self-catering accommodation businesses, helping to protect the sea-side resort’s tourism industry and jobs.

John Penrose has been working behind the scenes with Treasury Ministers so the new coalition Government could announce at the Budget (22nd June 2010) it will not repeal the special tax rules for Furnished Holiday Lets (FHL) as the previous administration had planned. The Tourism Alliance had warned that if the tax breaks had been scrapped as Gordon Brown’s Government had intended, “jobs in rural and coastal areas will shrink” and just a “10% reduction on the number of self-catering properties…. would result in over £200m in tourism spend and over 4,500 jobs being lost from rural and seaside economies” including Weston-super-Mare.

In the Budget 2010 statement, Chancellor George Osborne also announced a cut in corporation tax helping to boost Weston’s tourism businesses further.

John said: “I’m delighted we’ve managed to keep these tax breaks in place. All the warnings suggest that if they’d been scrapped many local self-catering businesses could have been forced to close with potentially catastrophic effects on the rest of our local tourism industry.

“The recession has had a massive impact on our local economy and we can’t afford to lose any more of our businesses or jobs. Also, with the imminent launch of the new pier, promenade and pier square, we can’t let anything put this massive investment at risk.

“Keeping these tax breaks, as well as reducing corporation tax is a significant step in the right direction to ensuring the future of our town’s tourism industry.”