{"id":670219,"date":"2026-07-02T17:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670219\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T17:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:59:09","slug":"ranganathans-bakery-closure-sparks-tax-defence-from-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670219\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranganathan’s bakery closure sparks tax defence from minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

A government minister has defended national insurance rises after an 89-year-old bakery chain co-owned by comedian Romesh Ranganathan ceased trading.<\/p>\n

Coughlans Bakery, which had branches in Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and south London, announced it had closed on Tuesday<\/a>, blaming the government’s decision to hike business rates and national insurance contributions for employers.<\/p>\n

The bakery’s managing director Sean Coughlan said the rates “absolutely smashed local business”.<\/p>\n

Commons Leader Sir Alan Campbell defended the change on Thursday, saying it was needed to “spend more and invest in our public services”.<\/p>\n

Ranganathan became the bakery’s co-owner in 2024<\/a> and following the business’ voluntary liquidation said “gutted isn’t the word”.<\/p>\n

The Commons Leader’s defence came in response to Carshalton and Wallington MP Bobby Dean, who said his community had been “rocked” by the closure, blaming government policy for “killing” family-run businesses.<\/p>\n

He said Coughlans had reported a “fantastic month” in March and that in the previous year there had been new store openings, before the government’s new rules began in April.<\/p>\n

“When we warned about it, we were told from the benches opposite that we couldn’t fund public services without these rises in business taxes, but let me make it clear – you will no longer receive any tax income from this local business anymore, and I fear that the revenue loss will continue to grow over the course of this year,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A government minister has defended national insurance rises after an 89-year-old bakery chain co-owned by comedian Romesh Ranganathan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-670219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670219","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=670219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}