Pubs are calling time in towns and villages up and down the country at a time of year when business should be booming.
The Swan pub is facing closure before Christmas (Image: Supplied )
The landlady of the last remaining pub in a country village has slammed Rachel Reeves’s Budget as the “final nail in the coffin”, forcing her to call time on the business just before Christmas. Carol Kenny took over the Swan Inn in Mattishall, Norfolk, less than 12 months ago, but is now walking away because of rising rent, bills and business rates, which are set to cost her thousands more in the new year when the Chancellor’s policies kick in.
Ms Kenny pulled her final pint on Sunday and closed the bar for the final time, leaving Mattishall, which has a population of more than 2,500, one of the largest villages in Norfolk without a pub. Although the owners hope to find a new landlord to take on the lease in the new year, some in the village fear it may end up without a pub for the first time since at least the 18th century, when the Swan opened.
“I just can’t afford to keep this place on, and I know a lot of other landlords will find themselves in the same situation after the budget,” said Ms Kenny, 64, who lives above the pub.
“It’s the only pub in the village, which is such a shame for the locals, but sometimes I’ll cash up after a quiet day and there will only be £60 in the till. There are regulars who have been drinking here for years, and they’re so upset that we’re having to close the pub down before Christmas. But I haven’t got a choice – I just can’t carry on like this anymore.”
Experts have said that many other towns and villages could suffer a similar fate, with warnings that hundreds of hospitality venues and tens of thousands of jobs will be lost due to tax rises announced by the chancellor in last month’s budget.
The Chancellor has been blamed for pubs facing closure (Image: Getty )
Critics have accused Ms Reeves of “sentencing countless pubs to death” by hiking their rates by thousands of pounds each year. They say she delivered “a budget for benefits street”, raising taxes on businesses and working people to pay for welfare. The reaction to the Budget has been so bad, some pubs have said they will ban Labour MPs from their bars, with Jeremy Clarkson becoming the latest publican to back the move.
Up to 30,000 hospitality businesses in England are now at risk of closure as a direct result of the budget, according to trade group UK Hospitality.
For Ms Kenny, increases to national insurance contributions and the minimum wage meant she had to cut eight staff and significantly reduce the pub’s hours. She currently pays £4,000 a month on rent, £48,000 each year. This is on top of the thousands she spends on rising energy bills and staff costs.
Now, her business rates are also set to increase, with the pub’s rateable value – the figure on which its rates are calculated – jumping 60pc as a result of changes announced at the same time as the budget.
Those changes – alongside the ending of the 40pc discount on rates for the hospitality industry in April – will see the tax rise by thousands of pounds for most pubs next year. The government says it has introduced a £4.3bn support package over the next three years to help businesses that have seen their bills increase because of the revaluation.
But any help has come too late for its current landlady.
“I can’t wait to get out of this trade,” said Ms Kenny, who previously worked as a carer/nurse in care homes across Norfolk before taking on the pub in December last year.
“The cost of everything is phenomenal. Everything costs far too much. I don’t think landlords will be able to cope after these changes. I can’t see how they can survive.”
The Chancellor is facing pressure from the pub industry to call off her taxes (Image: Getty )
She reluctantly raised her prices earlier this year, adding 5p to the cost of a pint, but she couldn’t bring herself to increase them any further.
“I couldn’t do that to my regulars,” she said, “I couldn’t add 20 or 30 pence on a pint.”
Fewer customers and changing drinking habits are other reasons Ms Kenny chose to cut her losses and close the pub.
She added: “People aren’t drinking in pubs as much as they used to, I had to reduce my opening times from Thursday to Sunday.
“I’m now shut three days of the week and I had to cut eight members of staff, so I now only employ two and myself. It’s been absolute hell. Now, after the budget, I know I can’t do it anymore.”
The British Beer and Pub Association estimates that 378 pubs will have permanently closed this year, at a rate of one a day, resulting in more than 5,600 direct job losses.