The changing face of hairdressing

The hairdressing industry is totally unique in many aspects and has to constantly re-invent itself.

On March 17th there was a never before seen protest outside the House of Commons in light of financial burdens facing the industry.

The British Hair Consortium, organised The Save Our Salons rally, with people around the country from the hair and beauty industry.

The aim was to get across to the government, how recent tax increases – particularly VAT, will affect every aspect of businesses. One argument is that the current tax system impacts the industry disproportionately.

If VAT was cut to 10% this would help with recruitment to insure salons keep employing young people and training them to be great hairdressers.

Over 500 employees from the sector, turned up in hair gowns or wearing black to show unity and strength. There were many hair and beauty treatments carried out en-route!

Rising costs in hair and beauty

Hair and beauty salons have been struggling with rising costs across the board and a recent report by The British Hair Consortium, highlighted how introducing a split rate for VAT, would make good fiscal sense to balance the books and this would help to turn years of neglect into saving many salons from closing.

Hair and beauty salons are a mainstay of our failing high streets, and to see so many closing because they simply can’t afford to stay open would be a travesty and surely the death of salons as we know them.

A one-size-fits-all system cannot work.

So many salon owners are asking their employees to become self-employed. If VAT was cut to 10%, it wouldn’t cost the government a penny!

It would potentially increase VAT registrations and enable salons to employ more apprentices.

It is predicted that employment in this sector will decline to 93% by 2030…just 5 years away…

Ireland has already recognised this problem and has dropped VAT rates to 9% in labour-intensive businesses.

It is already having a significant effect on employment and employees benefitting from much improved employment rights.