The Big 6 supermarkets have joined retail leaders’ calls for the government to reduce business rates to support the UK.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has penned an open letter to the Labour government, signed by, among others, the chief executives of leading UK supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Aldi, Marks and Spencer, Iceland, Asda, Morrisons, the Co-op and Lidl.

The letter calls for a 20% reduction in business rates bills for all retail properties and argues that the sector pays 7.4% of all business taxes, “a share 1.5 times greater than our share of the overall economy”.

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The first page of the BRC open letter

The BRC said: “Now is the time to level the playing field between industries with a retail adjustment to rates as this is the best way to achieve this manifesto commitment.

“We are writing to ask you to use the Autumn Budget to apply a Retail Rates Corrector, a 20% reduction to rates bills for retail properties of all sizes in all locations.”

The retail trade body added that not only would the changes ensure tax would be shared more fairly across the economy, it would also “drive the investment across all parts of the country that you have rightly identified as critical to long-term growth”.

The letter follows Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts and Usdaw general secretary Paddy Lillis warning earlier this year that without government reform of the business rate levy, more than 17,000 shops across the UK could be at risk of closure.