'Chancellor's Budget could cost me £500,000 a year'

Cheesemaker 'in shock'

- By Steph Spyro Deputy Political Editor

A THIRD-generation cheese-maker has warned that Rachel Reeves’ Budget could cost his 164-year-old dairy farm at least £500,000 a year.

Richard Clothier, managing director of Wyke Farms in Somerset, has been forced to hike prices following the Chancellor’s tax-raising decisions.

He described October's Budget, which included a £25billion National Insurance hike, as “quite a shock” and a “difficult challenge” for his company, which is the UK’s largest independent cheese producer.

It came on top of strong wage inflation and changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief.

Richard, who is guardian of a secret Cheddar recipe created by his grandma Ivy’s family in 1861, said of the changes: “It’s probably going to cost an extra £500,000 a year.

“We've got about 150 farmers that supply us from the region. They’ve all been impacted by NI increases for employers and also inheritance tax at a time when their confidence was quite low anyway.

“Like NI, it’s the unpredictability. The fact it was something the Government said wasn’t probably going to happen and then it happened.

It wasn’t as if people had any time to prepare for it.”