One by one, Britain is losing its pubs and the industry is declining. So when will we take note and start saving the quintessential British pub?
“Pubs are closing left, right and centre,” says Martyn Hillier, owner of The Butcher’s Arms in Herne, Britain’s smallest pub. “It’s a sorry sight, we’re losing community hubs. A pub is more than just a building where people drink, for some people it’s the only time they leave the house. But they’re now worth more as houses, or as flats, than a pub.”
11,000 pubs have closed since the 2008 financial crash, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). When money was easier to come by, major pub chains were borrowing millions of pounds to expand their alcohol-fuelled empires. The 2008 crisis, however, saw a downturn in business and funds became much harder to find.
Pub chains, or pubcos, such as Shepherd Neame and Punch, are now dumping pubs as fast as they can. When billed as perfect for redevelopment into flats or houses, pubs sell for notably more – and that’s what many of them have become.
Pubs are the secular churches of England, their battered bars and creaky stools the hallmark of British culture. There is no definition of a perfect pub. Some yearn for the rattling of fruit machines and the whiney twang of Jamie Carragher in the 4pm kick-off. Others crave quiet, real ale and an open fire.
A CTRL ALT survey of 124 people found that 75% of people still find the pub an appealing place to visit, listing ‘atmosphere’ as one of the main reasons why. Nobody seemed to believe the pub is necessarily dead yet – but is likely to continue dying if pubcos continue their unimaginative ways of running them. “Pubs need to have a unique selling point, they need to have a reason for people to go there,” says Ron Emslie, former landlord of an East London pub. “You cannot make a profit solely on beer – so pubs have to find a way to make money on something else, whether that’s atmosphere, or quizzes, or a real ale that can’t be bought anywhere else.”
Hillier goes further. The pubcos, he says, “have no thought for small brewers. The big boys do things the way they always have, that’s why it was almost impossible for anyone to open a pub until the [2003] Licensing Act. Up until then, if you wanted to get a license, you had to advertise to everybody that you were going to do so three months in advance. It’s easier now, but there are other challenges in place.”
The challenges? A perfect brew of recession, unsustainable overheads, beer tax, smoking ban and a cheaper, wider range of supermarket beer. CTRL ALT research found 80% of people feel punters are choosing to drink at home, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade people to leave their homes in the first place.
The average cost of a pint in the UK: £3.60, depending on which part of the country you are in. Cost of a can from the supermarket: approximately £1.25. At home you can choose to watch anything, or play FIFA, or choose your music. In the pub, it is Sky Sports News, BBC News, both with the sound off, or music that may not be for you.
“Why bother?” asks Emslie. “You can do what you want for an awful lot cheaper and be in the comfort of your own home too.”
The price gap between supermarkets and pubs grew faster than ever in 2008 when the Labour government introduced the beer duty escalator. Between then and 2013, beer duty grew by 42%. In that same period, 7000 pubs closed and 58,000 jobs were lost.
While the escalator has since been scrapped, the price of beer has not reduced. The result? The slow death of pubs which never made enormous profits. Tenant landlords suffer the costs, rather than the pubcos. They are left to bleed dry until the pubcos evict them, and sell the pub for profit.
Emslie says: “Beer doesn’t make money, so it’s easier, and quicker, for these pubcos to make a quick sum by selling the buildings.”
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which lobbies for keeping pubs open, is pushing the government to do more to ensure the future of these cherished boltholes.
Katie Wiles, Senior Communications Manager at CAMRA, says the cost of drinking is becoming too much. “We are campaigning for a preferential rate of duty set for draught beer compared to bottled beer,” she says. “It would help pubs to compete and to sell beer cheaper from draught, which would give them a greater competitive edge over supermarkets. A third of the cost of a pint now is down to taxes, and it’s only going up.”
“It’s these costs that hurt the small, independent pubs the most,” Wiles adds. “We are seeing the highest closures in small pubs, whereas larger pub numbers are actually rising slightly.”
Alcohol consumption rates are at their lowest since surveys began in 2005, according to the ONS. 57% of adults aged 16 or over in Great Britain, in 2017, drank alcohol in the week before their interview for the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey.
This figure was 65% in 2005. The pub owning industry, Emslie adds, is becoming an increasingly difficult one to conquer. He says: “It’s harder for a pub to succeed now than it ever was before – the smoking ban, ridiculous overheads, people drinking less, the list goes on.”
The initial smoking ban, proposed by health secretary and former 60-a-day man John Reid, pledged to ban smoking in pubs that served food. When the ban took full effect in England, in 2007, all pubs were hit.
Tellingly, in the two years following the ban, a CGA Strategy study found a worrying decline in the pub industry. The percentage change of pubs operating in England totalled -2.55% in 2008, and -4.11% in 2009, compared with -1.22% in 2006 prior to the ban.
“In the decade following the smoking ban a fifth of the entire pub estate closed,” says Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ rights lobby group Forest. “The ban obviously isn’t the only factor, but it undeniably had a huge impact on the traditional British boozer, many of which didn’t have the option of an outdoor smoking area or beer garden.”
Clark adds it is important to stress the 2008 economic crisis undoubtedly played a role in these elevated closure rates, and may explain the 2009 drastic increase – but he also adds the crisis didn’t hit until the latter months of 2008. The figures suggest there was a correlation with the implementation of the smoking ban.
The true impacts of the ban depend on who you are talking to. When Hillier opened The Butchers Arms in 2005, two years before the ban was implemented, he put his own rules in place. He says: “I had a policy – no smokers, no lagers and, more recently, no mobile phones. We’re shit at socialising in the UK, that’s why I put these rules in place.”
Hillier concedes lager drinkers are a different kettle of fish to his 60 or 70 regular customers, but he is happy to lose them. “Real ale has twice as many hops as lager,” he says. “Hops are soporific, so they make you drowsy. The best part? My customers start drifting off after they’ve had a few rather than starting a fight.”
Cluttered with memorabilia, six barrels of real ale (sourced from small local breweries) and 12 seats all facing one another, Hillier’s micropub is worlds apart from the lager-serving Smugglers Inn across the road. But that is part of the charm.
“I set it out like this on purpose – to get people socialising. We even talk to Americans in here,” he chuckles as one of his regular customers walks in. “Something like 19 people have moved to Herne just because of the pub. Estate agents are now using it as a positive to sell houses in the area. It’s bringing everybody back together to get them talking again – that’s what the pub is all about.”
Alcohol is the fuel to our social engine, and always has been. Social change has hurt the British pub, but the key principle behind it remains in place – alcohol and socialising. It is the ownership model that is falling behind, and needs to be more responsive to change. Community-focused pubs like The Butchers Arms are thriving, and if the British pub is to survive – that is the starting point.
Embrace change. Revel in it, in fact. In the words of pub-obsessed punk group, Sham 69, “Come on, we’re going down the pub”.
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