The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) has published a five-page assessment of the draft Budget, which it sent last week to Holyrood’s finance committee and Scottish government ministers.

It praises decisions to scrap the mooted business rate surtax on grocers, freeze the basic property rate and fund action to combat shop theft, while ruling out increases in income tax and not applying fair work conditionality to business rate reliefs and licences to trade.

However, it criticises the Budget for not including measures to reduce the cost of running a retail business, for increasing business rates for medium-sized and larger shops and for not including rates relief for smaller stores.

SRC’s submission also voices scepticism over plans to consider additional tax powers for local authorities.

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said: “Whilst the proposed Scottish Budget is far from perfect and has flaws, there is much in it that retailers can get behind.

“Robust debate and scrutiny of the Budget over the coming weeks is both right and necessary, however our hope is that ministers and MSPs can work collegiately to pass the Budget without diluting the pro-growth measures during parliamentary horse-trading.

“A failure to do so risks adding a thick layer of uncertainty at a challenging time for retail.”