The impact of rising energy costs on Essex's leisure industry: "We saw our bookings take a 50% nosedive"
They're calling for an energy price cap for businesses
Leisure and entertainment venues across Essex are struggling to cope with skyrocketing energy bills.
This comes after six of the UK's largest pub chains penned an open letter warning soaring energy bills could cause widespread closures in the industry and urging the government to act to avoid "real and serious irreversible" damage to the sector.
Now, we've spoken to Phil Tett, who owns Escape Colchester and Chelmsford, and Game of Throwing in the same locations.
He signed 2 year fixed price energy contracts before prices rose and says he's very lucky: "Luckily on the Chelmsford site, we signed up to a two year cap, and at our Colchester site, our contract ran out last October, so we signed another fixed-2-year contract before the prices rose too much.
"Where we're being affected more is in terms of customers."
Phil says he's seeing fewer customers when prices rise: "Every time there are announcements that prices are going up, we see a difference.
"When the energy price cap was announced, we saw our bookings take a 50% nosedive, but then, when people realised they did have a little more money in their pockets and that they won't be too affected until the future, we saw bookings get back up to where they should be."
Out of control gas prices following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia have contributed to rocketing energy bills for operators.
On Friday, regulator Ofgem confirmed that bills for an average UK household would surge by 80% in October when the new price cap comes into force.
However, businesses operate without a regulated price cap, which Phil notes can cause issues in the leisure industry: "Talking to similar businesses, some of their bills have gone up by 50-60%."
He says he, and other similar businesses, are already planning what they'll do when their fixed energy contracts end: "Most people I've spoken to are going to stick with a moving rate rather than a fixed rate. Yes, you can sign up for a 2-year fixed rate, but the rate is what the cost of energy is at now.
"If the cost of energy drops down again, you'd still be stuck with the high cost, so everyone's planning on going with the variable rate, because - hopefully - rates will drop back down again."
Whilst Phil's luckily not been too affected by rising costs yet, he'd still like to see the government do more to help businesses: "One of the things that particularly helped us out during Covid was reduced VAT - that really helped.
"Another good thing to introduce would be a price cap for businesses."
The Government
Boris Johnson acknowledged people would face "tough" months ahead due to the soaring cost of living but promised more announcements on energy security, including on nuclear power.
On a visit in Dorset today he said a huge amount of help had already been announced to cope with rising energy costs, but his successor as prime minister - Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak - would be able to provide "a further package of support".
"Whichever of the two candidates gets in next week, what the Government is also going to do is provide a farther package of support for helping people with the cost of energy," he said.
"What we've got to do is get through the tough months - and I'm not going to shrink from this, it is going to be tough in the months to come," he said.
But Mr Johnson said he wanted to give people a "sense of hope and perspective" because their consumption of Russian fossil fuels had already declined and the Government had a "long-term British energy security strategy".
"We're putting in more nuclear - you're going to be hearing more about that later this week - and we're putting in absolutely shedloads of wind power".