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Maggie O’Farrell, Philip Pullman, Katherine Rundell and Elif Shafak are among the authors supporting a campaign by independent booksellers who have urged Andy Burnham to extend business rates relief for pubs, clubs and live music venues to bookshops, warning that rising bills could put some shops at risk of closure.

A total of 234 independent booksellers have signed an open letter organised by the Booksellers Association, calling on the prime minister and the chancellor to give bookshops the same consideration as other businesses that play a significant, positive role in their communities.

The campaign follows the government’s announcement last month of a 20% reduction in business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues from April 2027.

More than a dozen authors have told the Booksellers Association they support the letter, including children’s laureate Patrice Lawrence, Adam Kay, Lemn Sissay, Anthony Horowitz, Patrick Ness, Donna Ashworth and Rachel Joyce.

Burnham also recently announced plans to tackle the spread of vape shops, betting shops and “rogue operators” on high streets, giving local authorities the power to reject new betting shops and adult gaming centres. He said such businesses had displaced “the shops, services and community spaces that people are crying out for”.

The letter, sent on 13 August, states that bookshops were “deeply disappointed” to learn they would not be included in the additional relief. “The government has accepted that businesses which deliver significant community benefit deserve targeted support. Bookshops clearly meet that test.”

“Business rates relief for bookshops would also provide a meaningful legacy for the National Year of Reading,” it continued. “The government is rightly telling the country that reading matters. But as things stand, its legacy risks being contradictory: promoting reading on the one hand while implementing policies that reduce investment in bookshops and may contribute to their closure on the other.”

“Independent bookshops are the beating hearts of our high streets and communities”, said O’Farrell, author of Hamnet. “They need all the support we can give them.”

Rundell said: “To lose [bookshops] from our high streets would be to chip away at our culture, and at our ability to access fresh thought and new ideas.”

The Treasury has argued that bookshops already receive support through permanently lower business rates multipliers and a £4.3bn package intended to limit increases in bills.

Analysis commissioned from economic consultancy Cebr found that independent bookshops in England that are not eligible for full small business rates relief face an average annual increase of £4,563 by 2029-30, with some bills expected to double when transitional relief ends.

Across the sector, business rates receipts are projected to increase by 45% nominally. For the average independent bookshop, Cebr estimates this would require selling an extra 1,141 books a year to cover the additional cost.

The impact is already being felt, according to separate Booksellers Association research, with 85% of independent booksellers saying they are less likely to invest in stock, staffing, events or their premises as a result of business rates changes.

“In the current encircling corporate darkness, independent booksellers are lighthouses,” Philip Pullman said. “They are almost the last beacons shining to remind us about private reading, personal discovery, and the life-saving joy of encountering minds and hearts that speak to us as one person to another.”

Laura McCormack, the Booksellers Association’s head of policy and public affairs, said restricting high-street businesses deemed as negative was “only half the job”. “You can’t rebuild Britain’s high streets by tackling the wrong businesses while making it harder for the right ones to succeed,” she said.