Buckingham Bingo hit by shock tax rise - Crain's Manchester Business

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The hard-pressed industry has been crippled by the smoking ban and now has to cope with another change which will cost it millions of pounds

8:24 am, April 23, 2009
Buckingham Bingo hit by shock tax rise

Bingo hall chains, such as Bolton-based Buckingham Bingo, are counting the cost of tax rises imposed by Chancellor Alistair Darling in his Budget yesterday.

Although VAT on playing bingo and other forms of gaming was scrapped, any gain from this was more than wiped out by a rise in bingo duty from 15 per cent to 22 per cent.

The hard-pressed industry has been crippled by the smoking ban and now has to cope with another change which will cost it millions of pounds.

Ian Burke, the chief executive of rival bingo operator Rank, said there had been no advance warning from the Treasury about the 50 per cent rise in bingo duty.

Buckingham Bingo wrote off more than £69m worth of investment last year as the group sought to restructure its debt pile.

Parent company, Full House Holdings Ltd, posted a loss of £88.7m on a reduced turnover of £33.4m in the year to the end of March 2008, compared with a £10m loss on sales of £46.9m during a previous 16-month period to the end of March 2007. The loss consisted of the £69m in investment write-offs and more than £10m in interest payments.

In April last year, the chain was taken back by its principal funder, Barclays Bank, from private equity firm Alchemy Partners and placed into the hands of a turnaround specialist from its venture capital arm, Barclays Ventures.

The company blamed its troubles on the introduction of the smoking ban in July 2007, which it said led to a “serious deterioration in both the level of admissions and the amount spent by customers”.

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