Contribution by: Andrew Brooke’s

Comment by: Andrew Brooke’s

Focus area: Pubs

Regulator concerned: My comments are general and do not relate to a particular regulator or regulatory function

Comment:
Pubs over the last few years have been under increasing pressure from all sides, these especially effect small community pubs as they rely on a potentially small clientele for the majority of their business.

The first and potentially main issue is the increased competition from the supermarkets with them offering products at far less than even the majority of pubs can buy them at themselves, this is a time when there is increasing pressure on household incomes from the double dip recession and ever decreasing disposable income.

Further pressures come from in this tough economic time the government have increased duty on all products by 2% over inflation year on year , this coupled with huge increases in energy prices as well as the majority of other necessities to run pubs has meant that most landlords have had to increase their prices just to stand still and in our experience the majority of them have gone backwards to such an extent that they are living on amounts way below the minimum wage.

The continual increase in duty is seriously hurting the industry and if it continues at this pace along with the ever changing demands in legislation to enable a premises to be locensedl will only serve to more pubs having to close because they are unviable.