Firstly, may I wish you all a Happy New Year. Sadly, it is not looking that good for the pub trade and brewing industry. The situation regarding business rates has attracted a large amount of attention which, in its way, is positive. There has however been a lot of what looks to me to be \u2018bandwagon jumping\u2019. One national newspaper started a \u2018save pubs\u2019 campaign but then paid most attention to the changes to the drink driving laws. I have covered the situation regarding business rates in a separate article elsewhere in this edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problems leading to pub closures have not arisen only in the last year. There are a number of long term issues that need attention. Also, I really do not believe that there is a calculated campaign to eradicate the pubs of Britain, as some are claiming. At the risk of stating the obvious, not all pubs are in the same situation. The majority of pubs are owned and operated by large pub owning companies (pubcos) and, on the whole, they are not doing too badly. Even debt-laden Stonegate report that their Craft Union semi-franchises are doing well. Fuller\u2019s and Young\u2019s, now both simply pub companies, are doing well. There are still enough people prepared to pay their prices. For those who won\u2019t, Wetherspoons are prospering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From what I see in the trade press, those pubs most at risk are the ones owned and\/or operated as tenancies by individuals who do not have the resources of a large company behind them. Many have simply become unviable through the \u2018double whammy\u2019 of ever increasing costs and falling custom. Village pubs are seeing the return of the fashion for conversion into one large dwelling while, in small towns, pubs are being converted to Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) as the demand for these is booming. The more of these pubs we permanently lose, the more we are left with pubco and chain pubs with their restricted and monotonous beer ranges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, what else needs attention? The tied house system, as operated by the non-brewing pubcos in particular, is acknowledged to be anti-competitive. It skews the market. It has been in the power of the UK Government to do away with it ever since the legislation that supports it passed into UK law when we left the EU. CAMRA\u2019s Campaigns Team have repeatedly made this point to both the previous and current governments. Then there is taxation in the form of alcohol duty and VAT. UK duty is far above the levels in force elsewhere in Europe. Duty on alcohol and tobacco used to be called \u2018sin taxes\u2019 and this is, I suspect, an echo of our Puritan past. Many in the hospitality industry, including Sir Tim Martin, are campaigning for a reduction in VAT and many agree with his argument for parity with supermarket chains. Indeed, in an interview with the Telegraph<\/em> after the Budget, Sir Tim commented, \u201cPrices will definitely rise across the industry, profits will be under pressure, and investment will be curtailed. I should have opened a small supermarket in 1979, not a pub<\/em>.\u201d Perhaps those who have recently become supporters of our pubs might like to join CAMRA in campaigning on these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n .Finally, I would also like to comment on the use of pub numbers. Many people have used an assortment of numbers when discussing pub closures. It seems that these have been calculated simply to support their particular standpoint. One national newspaper claimed that its numbers came from a Government source and CAMRA has queried this with the Office of National Statistics. I saw one list of closures in London that included pubs closed by BrewDog and Wetherspoons that were almost immediately taken on by other pub companies, something that was actually acknowledged in a footnote! I also suspect that they are not netting off pubs that reopen after long closures, such as the Blue Maid, or new conversions, such as the Black Eel. Similarly, there is a considerable \u2018churn\u2019 with pubco tenancies and franchises, where incumbents often do not renew their agreements and there is, it appears, no shortage of people who want to replace them. CAMRA produces its own pub closure statistics, which are based on local knowledge gathered by volunteers with no axe to grind. Those are the ones that I trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tony Hedger<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Firstly, may I wish you all a Happy New Year. Sadly, it is not looking that good for the pub trade and brewing industry. The situation regarding business rates has… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021\/revisions\/6022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}