{"id":543153,"date":"2026-04-21T16:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543153\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T16:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:50:09","slug":"fears-effects-of-iran-war-will-devastate-kent-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543153\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears effects of Iran war will devastate Kent small businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alin Badea, chief executive of Royal Cars, a taxi firm in Tunbridge Wells, said its drivers were having to pay an extra \u00a3300 a month for petrol. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are having to increase taxi fares, and we try to be as reasonable as possible,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Customers understand the situation, but if this keeps going, we can&#8217;t sustain the businesses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Badea said the firm has seen a 20% drop in business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tudor Price, chief executive of Kent Chamber of Commerce, said: &#8220;If the government wanted to see a growth in our economy, an intervention is required.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This could be temporary relief of business rates, reduction of fuel VAT or rolling back national insurance costs.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alin Badea, chief executive of Royal Cars, a taxi firm in Tunbridge Wells, said its drivers were having&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}