03/09/2026
TOMORROW: AN OPEN INVITATION TO OUR LOCAL BUSINESS COMMUNITY 📣📣📣
On Friday 4th September at 3pm, The Common E2 will be hosting a meeting with our local MP Rushanara Ali, and we would love as many of you as possible to join.
The agenda is simple: the cost of running an independent hospitality business in the UK has never been more punishing.
We pay 20% VAT on hospitality, one of the highest rates in Europe. France charges 10%. Italy charges 10%. Spain charges 10%. The UK stands almost alone in applying the full rate to the businesses that feed, gather, and sustain our communities. Add to this the relentless rise in the cost of materials, increases in employer National Insurance, a necessity to uphold London Living Wage, and business rates that just keep on climbing: then, the outlook for small independent businesses is increasingly bleak.
This is an opportunity to have our voice heard at a parliamentary level, to humanise the statistics. For us to ask our MP, directly, to put our concerns to the Prime Minister and push for a reduction in the hospitality VAT rate from 20% to 10%.
If you run a café, restaurant, bar, deli, market stall, or any food and beverage business in Bethnal Green & Bow, please attend this meeting.
Friday 4th September, 3pm
The Common E2
53 Old Bethnal Green Road, London E2 6QA
Please come. Bring a colleague. Share this with your neighbours. The more voices in that room, the louder the message.
See you there ♥️