STAFF in Butlin’s Minehead holiday resort fear mass redundancies as the company faces a huge increase in bills for business rates, National Insurance employer contributions, and national minimum wage.

The Free Press understands Butlin’s wants to reduce the number of managers and skilled tradespeople, who are among the highest paid workers.

Staff are going through a statutory consultation process with the jobs of some who have worked there for about 20 years under threat.

The changes were expected to ‘simplify’ the resort’s operation to ensure the company was focused on ‘getting closer to our guests and our team’.

Butlin’s refused to say how many employees were affected or how many jobs would be lost as a result of the exercise, but said job losses would be ‘small’.

A spokesperson for the company told the Free Press: “The UK economy remains challenging and businesses like Butlin’s have been heavily impacted by the business rates hikes, on top of the jobs tax and potential holidays tax.

“As a result, we have proposed changes to our resort structures which means we will unfortunately be making a small number of job losses.

“While this represents a small proportion of our overall workforce, we fully recognise the impact on those affected and are committed to supporting them through the process.”

The Free Press reported in December how Butlin’s faced a £3.8 million increase in its rateable value from April, 2026, a 270 per cent jump, under a new Government tax regime which business leaders were warning would ‘decimate’ the rural tourism economy.

Butlin’s is also similarly cutting jobs at its Skegness resort, in Lincolnshire, but nothing has yet been reported from its site in Bognor Regis, West Sussex.

The company’s latest accounts showed it made a pre-tax profit of £28.3 million in 2024, bouncing back from the previous year’s loss of £74 million.