In its Budget submission – entitled Realising The Growth Ambition – sent earlier this week to Finance Secretary Shona Robison, the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) says retailers are striving to re-invent themselves in the face of changes in shopping habits, weak demand and rising costs.

Retail is Scotland’s largest private sector employer, providing nearly a quarter of a million jobs. However, it’s an industry in transition and retailers are working hard to keep down shop prices whilst recent data shows retail sales flatlining and shopper footfall declining. Figures published last week showed the number of retail jobs in Scotland had slumped by 30,000 and there were 500 fewer stores.

The submission from the leading sectoral trade body comes ahead of the expected publication this autumn of the devolved administration’s £60 billion tax and spending plans for 2025-26. The SRC’s 12-page paper contains 23 recommendations ranging from ideas for cutting the cost of running government, to supporting consumer spending, helping retailers invest, and easing the regulatory pipeline.

Specifically, the SRC’s key recommendations include:

• Injecting certainty into fiscal decisions through a 2-year Budget Accord with Opposition MSPs leading up to the next Holyrood election
• The bulk of any gap in Scottish Government finances tackled by spending restraint rather than tax rises which could stymie economic recovery
• Bolstering consumer spending by ruling out increases in income tax rates
• Shelving the misbegotten mooted business rate surtax on larger grocery stores
• Restoring the level playing field with England for firms paying the Higher Property Rate
• Freezing the Basic, Intermediate and Higher Property Rates for 2025-26
• Ruling out making licenses to trade and eligibility for business rates reliefs conditional on payment of the ‘real’ living wage

SRC wants Scotland to be the best place in the UK to grow a retail business. Their paper argues it matters profoundly that Ministers succeed in restraining spending and reducing the cost of government, otherwise taxes might rise which would impair economic recovery.

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said: “We recognise this will be a challenging Budget for Scottish Ministers as they seek to balance a stark fiscal outlook whilst trying to stimulate greater levels of economic growth.

“These are unsettling times too for retailers, despite the industry having shown tremendous fortitude and resilience to come through the tribulations of the past few years of Covid and the costs crunch. Trading conditions remain tough and the only fixed point in a world of flux for the industry seems to be rising costs, which are near impossible to absorb which means they are likely to be passed on to shoppers.

“To provide greater certainty, a two-year Budget Accord with Opposition MSPs could provide a more strategic and less piecemeal approach to devolved policy making.”

Mr Lonsdale continued: “Stimulating greater levels of private sector investment is crucial to lifting Scotland’s measly rate of economic growth and living standards, and generating the tax revenues to support public services and alleviate poverty. Increasing taxes could exacerbate the problem by further hampering growth. That’s why we are calling for a mixture of spending retrenchment, forestalling rises in taxation, competitive business taxes and regulatory easements, as a means of proving a path to greater prosperity and towards making Scotland the best place in the UK to grow a retail business.”

“With retail under pressure, the Scottish Budget is an opportunity for Ministers and MSPs to take tangible steps to help retailers as they continue to reinvent themselves for the future. We hope they seize the moment.”