THE owner of a travel company in County Durham has branded the cost-of-living crisis “debilitating” after seeing the price of fuel ‘skyrocket’ 62 per cent over the last two weeks from his main suppliers.
Andrew Scott, who owns Stanley Travel, has laid bare the impact that the rise in day-to-day costs is having on him, in both a business and personal capacity.
After just about recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, where customers numbers were limited or non-existent, Mr Scott says the everyday hit from a hike in energy, fuel and produce has the potential to put a lot of companies out of business.
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Despite noting that Stanley travel were ‘surviving’, through its contracts with schools, universities, holiday firms, he has felt the pinch of the cost-of-living crisis, with his purchase of 18,000 litres of fuel each week now costs 62 per cent more on average than it did two weeks ago.
Through having contracts set up with certain companies, which have been in place long-term or since last year, Mr Scott also believes that a ‘hidden’ cost has been incurred by the fact that no small print exists in Stanley Travel’s contracts – allowing them to charge more now that fuel has risen in price.
He said: “As consumers, everyone is feeling the pinch at the moment, whether it’s fuel or energy or any costs. We are doing okay as a business because we have continued contracts, but the bulk fuel we buy for our tanks has gone up, heating and electric costs have shot up.
“In January of this year, we seemed to be coming out of Covid-19 and everything seemed rosy, but this hasn’t gone the way anyone thought.
“We saw an avalanche of cancellations, whether it was from schools who no longer required transport or holidaymakers who didn’t or couldn’t travel.
“An issue we didn’t see coming was the fact that we’re locked into contracts we’ve been in during the last four years that mentions nothing about what happens when fuel costs rise, so we have to take the hit.”
It’s not just the fuel and energy element that’s impacting the business, though. It’s the customers.
With the cost-of-living crisis taking hold of people’s finances, Mr Scott has seen people reduce how much they use his companies’ taxi and bus services – with some cutting their usage from four times a week down to just once a week.
He added: “We’ve found that our workforce has been impacted massively by the cost-of-living crisis, but our customers have seen the pinch too.
“People are going out less, they can afford less in town and people are going for less meals, visiting the pub less and that’s got to have a knock-on effect.”
Yesterday (March 23), chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a raft of measures during his Spring statement, including cutting fuel duty by 5p per litre, as well as unveiling a £6bn plan to increase the national insurance contribution threshold in July, but Mr Scott feels like more needs to be done by the government.
He’s even seen examples of where petrol stations near his business have raised the price of fuel by 5p per litre, so that the figure will be at a ‘normal’ level when the chancellor’s measure comes in.
“As a travel company, we are doing a service for the government by taking children to school, to swimming and we need to have some incentive to still trade,” Mr Scott said.
“We need reassurances that we will be protected, and we need more than the 5p rises. There’s a petrol station nearby that’s raised the price of fuel from 176p to 181p, and this new announcement from the government will mean nothing to the average person on the street.”
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