Irizar UK has offered help to the coach industry by providing templates for letters that can be sent to their MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, respectively. Each letter conveys the extent to which the coach sector has been hit by coronavirus COVID-19 and asks for government support.
Both messages explain that coach tourism in the UK generates £6bn per annum for the economy. They also outline that operators will “play a key role” in reviving those fortunes once the pandemic is over.
Also included is a request for coach operators to be given relief from paying business rates on their premises, as per the Local Government Association’s earlier advice, for the duration of the crisis.
The letters additionally ask for government intervention to reduce the burden on operators who have financed new coaches and now have little prospect of using them during the summer season.
Each template is available to download from Irizar UK’s website. Operators doing so need only change the wording to accommodate their own details, and in the case of the letter to MPs, his or her particulars.
Says Irizar UK Sales Director Julie Hartley: “Coach operators pride themselves on their self-sufficiency and ability to do business without government help in normal times. Yet these times are anything but normal.
“It has come for us all to contact our own MPs, plus the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to ask for some temporary help. Operators can either copy these letters directly over their own heading and signature, or draft their own copy along similar lines but personalised to their circumstances.
“Coach operators have been hit hardest of all by the crisis. Incoming tourism traffic, education, commuting and holidays, tours and excursions and virtually all forms of group travel are effectively banned through social distancing measures.”
Download the template for MPs here and for Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak here.
