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Britain's pubs are in crisis and politicians are starting to take notice
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Now the government is finally set to U-turn on hikes to business rates that have been punishing pubs
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But is this going to be enough? City AM reported back in December that in 2025 roughly one pub each day was closing down in the UK
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and now in 2026 the issue doesn't look like it's going to get much better unless there is significant intervention from the government
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Frustration with the government is, of course, rising at the same time. A lot of pub landlords are even barring Labour MPs from their premises
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That is in part because even though there are huge inflationary pressures that have hit hospitality over the last few years
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and of course, the long tail of the pandemic, government action, particularly on tax, has made the problem much more difficult
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It all kicked off in 2024 with Rachel Reeve's first budget. She promised not to raise headline rates of income tax or national insurance
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but one of the tax levers the government did pull was on business rates. They hit hospitality and retail particularly hard
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Revaluations of property values more recently mean that pubs are facing all new cost pressures
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The government have since said that they want to rebalance this, but in the most recent budget back last November in 2025
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new rules around property re-evaluations mean that pubs are paying on average about 1400 more
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than they would have been otherwise each year all in all the national picture that's 365 million
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pounds a year being paid by the sector just from this one change alone i spoke to andy tyg from
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the british beer and pub association about some of the challenges which are facing the pub sector
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we been meeting with the government and we talked through our proposals they seem very open to what more support they can offer I mean obviously they can promise anything but we certainly believe they recognise the strength of feeling in the sector
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the challenges that pubs continue to face after these new reforms. And so they are looking at, I believe, what can be done
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But of course, you know, until that happens, people are going to be very concerned
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Keir Starmer is having to U-turn on business rates, and he's insisted that the government
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is making efforts to help pubs. He has hinted that there could be a relaxation in licensing rules, so it could be that some
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pubs stay open as late as 1 or 2am, the idea being that the increased revenue from being
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able to stay open later would give a cash injection into some really struggling businesses
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But some landlords would argue that as it stands, because of the really high cost of
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employing people, of energy and of course business rates. They can't afford to stay open for the hours
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that they're already licensed for. One landlord, Andy Lennox, told City AM that these plans would
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essentially be whitewash that wouldn't help anyone. Meanwhile, Kate Nicholls, who is the chair of UK
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Hospitality, said that she is reassured that the government is taking the issue seriously, but she
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says that only tax cuts will cut the mustard here and that anything else isn't really going to meet
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the scale of the challenge. Even with the latest reversal on taxes on pubs, there are major and
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growing pressures building on the sector. It costs more than ever before to employ staff
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while changes to property values mean the costs are rising ever further. For all the warm words
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from the government about how much it cares about saving pubs, Britain's boozers urgently need costs
