A restaurant owner in Whitehaven has opened up about how she was forced to close her small business after they went bankrupt due to the impacts of the Covid pandemic.
Last year some businesses suffered due to the inflation crisis and the long-term impact of Covid with more than thirty thousand going bankrupt and owners ending up in debt.
Speaking to GB News, Helen Cleaver said: “We started the year before the Covid pandemic. We were just building the business up, it is a restaurant. My husband is a chef.
“We got the restaurant and started it up with his inheritance from his mum after she passed away. So it was great for the first year, we had regular customers coming in.
Helen Clever and her husband used inheritance from his late mother to open the restaurant
GB News
“It was quite a high end restaurant. We did nice food and got hold of fresh fish. Then Covid hit and we were completely closed down.
“Furlough kept the staff going but then of course we had Brexit, the war and everything just rocketed, prices of gas, electric deliveries it just crushed us. We lost the lot.”
GB News host Bev Turner said: “It is heartbreaking, what was the major issue for you?”
The former restaurant owner said: “The major issue was the price increase of everything. We didn’t have a garden and obviously just after Covid hit, pubs were allowed to open outside seating areas to try and get their money back but we didn’t have that option.
Bev Turner labelled the closure “heartbreaking”
GB News
“Then obviously we had to buy all of the instrumental things to keep people apart. So that was an extra cost and it was just the fact that people had gotten so used to drinking and eating outside in the gardens, getting takeaways brought in and people couldn’t afford to eat out because they were hit with the cost as well.”
Bev added: “The tragedy from that period, I think is that the huge corporations that could weather that storm have continued to build upon it because it changed so much of our human behaviour as well. Where does that leave the small business owner? What do you and your husband do now then?”
“Luckily, he’s a chef and at the moment that is quite sought after. I’m working in a bar but I am still paying lots of debt now.”
She added: “It would be nice if the Government would take a look at the businesses that did get crushed and see where they can help. Even pay back some of the money.
“Yes they did help pay some of the staff, but the owners themselves took a massive hit. It would be nice to be able to go to sleep at night and think do you know what? I don’t have to pay this debt for the next ten years.
“I can’t forgive this Government. I don’t like to say what I vote and what I don’t but my vote this year will be changing.
“I think you will find that maybe half the population won’t vote at all because they won’t have any confidence in any government.
“That is a shame because after all these years of being able to vote, people are just sick of it.”
