The village pub I run is being taxed to death

Telegraph

7 hours ago

At 5pm on Saturday, my pub sat empty.
The beer garden was open, the sun was shining – yet there was not a single punter to serve.
If you didn't know already that Britain's pubs are in crisis, then this sorry sight would have hammered home the catastrophic impact of Rachel Reeves's tax raid.
For the hospitality industry, we've never seen a situation quite as bad as this. As well as an apocalyptic backdrop of soaring costs and rising levies, landlords are also battling an unprecedented shift in consumer behaviour.
Families no long view a pit stop at the pub as an everyday social activity, but rather as a special treat. And I don't blame them.
When the average price of a pint rose above £5, we crossed a psychological threshold that turned what used to be one of Britain's favourite pastimes into a luxury.
No landlord wants to raise prices, but it is now the only way for us to recoup costs and survive in the face of higher taxes.
Somehow, the Westminster elite is yet to grasp all of this. Despite the devastating effects of the Chancellor's National Insurance increase, there is talk of further tax rises this autumn.
This would not only seal the fate of many more pubs and restaurants across the UK but also further unravel the country's social fabric.
The pub was once a place to enjoy each other's company. A hub where people of all backgrounds could come to congregate, socialise and get out of the house.
But tax rises have ripped that apart, as hard-up households choose the cheaper option of staying at home instead of popping out for a drink and a chat. Whatever we do to attract customers, visits keep falling – as people just aren't using the pub in the same way as old.
I was confronted with this depressing reality at The Wonston Arms on Saturday afternoon.
Despite our award-winning status, which includes being named Camra National Pub of the Year in 2018 and recently being awarded Hampshire's best boozer by The Telegraph, we did not have a single customer.
In my 10 years running the pub, which is wet-led and does not serve food, I'd never experienced anything like it.
It was one of the most shocking moments in what has been a dreadful year for the industry – one dominated by closures and job losses.
Since the Chancellor's Budget, I have tried to strip all unnecessary costs from the business in the hope of putting us on a stable financial footing.
I've got rid of Sky TV, scaled back our weekly opening hours from 35 to 27 and gone from having three full-time staff to running the pub myself, occasionally with the help of my wife and the odd part-timer. The volatility of trading and our ballooning tax bill have made it impossible for us to hire in the same way we used to.
We're not alone. Every single landlord I speak to is now saying that costs are unbearable. And the worst thing is that we can't say everything is going to be alright next weekend, or the weekend after that.
Trading in the hospitality industry today means survival, not success.
This is why I am calling on the Government to cut VAT for hospitality in the next Budget. Avoid the temptation of tax rises and give us a reason to invest.
No one in this game is here to sit still. We all want to grow, attract more business and strengthen our ties to the local community.
I invite Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to personally come down to my pub to see how hard people like me are working.
For all the pictures of politicians pulling pints and the countless promises to save Britain's pubs, it is now time for them to show they mean it.