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GOVERNMENT AID FOR ANTIQUES TRADE REQUESTED - SIGN THE PETITION
Posted by Antiques News - The Internet Newspaper For the British Antiques Trade on 27/05/2009
Following the letter sent to the Editor of The Times - reprinted below, members of the trade are being asked to sign the petition on Antiques.co.uk or via the link on About Us
The petition has received tremendous support to date at 27 May 2009, with more than three hundred signatures and comments posted from a wide selection of UK and international trade. Sarah Percy Davis, Chief Executive of LAPADA posted the following comment: "Congratulations on this impressive initiative. Business rates are crippling for many of our members and contributing to shop closures and the cloning of the high street. We give this campaign our full support!"
Iain Brunt will be in touch regularly to up-date Antiquesnews about the campaign.
"While other sectors are receiving help from the Government, the antiques industry - which is partly reliant on the housing market - does not. Even the recent VAT reduction does not help us," say doyen ceramics specialist Henry Sandon of Worcester and Ian Michael Brunt of Ledsham, Leeds, co-signatories of a Letter to the Editor of The Times, published in London on 4 April 2009. Under the headline, "Preserve Antiquarians" the letter concludes: "With sterling at its lowest for some considerable time, UK products are once again attractive to overseas buyers. With some marketing support from the Government, we could be using this opportunity to reach the world market for antiques." To justify the suggestion of government aid the letter quotes unspecified statistics that the UK's antiques and art market in 2007 contributed ten per cent of the global market share of £40 billion. In 2008 there was a significant fall from that £4 billion to £2.75 billion.
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