Everyone has a favourite pub. It might be one you go back to on holiday or it could be at the end of your road. It could be a stone’s throw from the office (City AM is blessed in this regard) or one that’s still going from your uni years.
The City AM Toast Awards recently lined up a selection of the Square Mile’s most treasured boozers and crowned The Rising Sun on Carter Lane as the best, but the shortlist was full of fabulous drinking haunts.
Most of my favourite pubs can be found on the Isles of Scilly, starting with the Turk’s Head on St Agnes (if you know, you know) and including the Seven Stones on St Martin’s and the Mermaid on St Mary’s. I’ll always retain a soft spot for the pub in Truro that turned a blind eye to our school ties, and I will never, ever, tire of the pleasure of walking into a pub for the first time and sensing immediately that its combination of atmosphere, architecture, ambiance and ales tells you that you’ve found a gem.
I thought about all of this on my commute to work this morning, after hearing Tom Kerridge on LBC. The chef and publican explained that all four of his pubs are facing major hikes in business rates. In one case the tax bill is going from just over £50,000 to more than £100,000.
Pubs are facing a world of pain
The Chancellor’s decision to revaluate rateable values at the same time as withdrawing Covid-era reliefs means that bricks and mortar businesses across the country are in for a world of pain. Pubs, restaurants and cafes are having to find tens of thousands of pounds to meet the demands, while many hotels are facing an increase of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Kerridge put these concerns to business secretary Peter Kyle at a recent event and said he was “incredibly supportive.” But Kyle is not a mere observer of this disaster; he is part of a government that lacks any genuine understanding of the pressures facing private sector employers.
Keir Starmer, pushed on the situation facing pubs in an interview last week, waffled about offering more late licences but it’s clear, as it so often is, that he does not understand the impact of his government’s policies.
Sadly, the number of pubs is steadily declining, not least because the costs and burdens they face are steadily rising. If Starmer moved to help this vital sector, I’d raise a glass to him.