Nik Antona, National Chairman for the Campaign for Real Ale discusses the crisis currently affecting the hospitality industry.
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00:00 It's been too expensive or kind of like expensive should we say for a while.
00:08 You're right, the cost of living crisis is influencing whether people feel they can go
00:14 to a, can afford to go to a pub where they may have gone three or four days a week.
00:20 The main factors contributing to the closure of British pubs include rising energy bills,
00:26 tax pressures and lower customer spending.
00:29 These challenges are putting immense strain on the hospitality industry, leading to the
00:35 potential loss of thousands of jobs and impacting countless communities.
00:40 Obviously pubs and clubs didn't benefit from the electricity cap that consumers did.
00:48 So we've had stories of customers paying or pubs paying three or four thousand pound a
00:54 year for their electricity jumping to 30, 40 thousand pound a year because there was
01:00 just no limit on what the electricity company and gas companies could charge them.
01:05 We've also got to take into account people have actually changed their drinking habits
01:11 since Covid and not going out as late as they were.
01:17 And it is causing them trouble.
01:22 In 2023, over 500 pubs closed across the UK.
01:27 In 2024, the British Beer and Pub Association reports that up to 750 British pubs could
01:35 be forced to close by the end of the first half of the year.
01:40 What we need the government to do is really is rebalance things like business rates.
01:45 It's not a happy story for the industry at all.
01:49 When you start losing smaller suppliers, that reduces range choice for the consumer and
01:55 it allows the bigger boys to start profiteering a bit more by pushing up the prices.