Rising bills and supermarket booze blamed for the closure of 36 pubs every week in Britain
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/21/fooddrinks-retail
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If you ever needed to show a visitor a typical pub you couldn't go far wrong with the Punch and Judy. Nestled between low houses on a back street in Tonbridge, Kent, its exposed wood beams, dark wooden floors, brass rails at the bar, desultory couples at tables with their half pints and Sunday papers, are a very British kind of ideal. Most in the room recognise, or know each other; some have been coming here for nearly 20 years.
The coffin in the front room would be unusual, though. Colm Powell, 44, the publican, has just ended a 10-day hunger strike, during which he slept in the coffin every night in a rococo but heartfelt protest against rising rents, beer prices, and fines imposed by the pub company, Enterprise Inns, that owns the pub. Last Friday he was served with an eviction notice, and at 11am on November 11, he will lose the business he has run for 17 years, and with it his social life and his home, because he lives above it. On November 1 he intends to go on hunger strike again. Out the back, in the garden/smokers' area, where his grapes have ripened dark and juicy and a tomato plant defies the coming autumn, he is subdued and quietly spoken, but determined. "When they come to take me they'll have to physically take me out in the box."
Coffin aside, he is part of an epidemic. According to the most recent figures from the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), 36 pubs are closing a week - five a day. In 2004, it was eight a week; two a week in 2005, and six a week in 2006. Kate Nicholls of the Association of Licensed
Multiple Retailers (ALMR, which represents anyone operating 50 or fewer bars or pubs), emphasises that these are net closures, so this is partly due to a sudden drop in numbers of openings. "In 2007 just over 1,000 new pubs opened, consistent since 2004. This year to date we've had 403 and I can't see it improving significantly by the end of the year." In the early 2000s, according to the ALMR, pubs were a major source of employment, accounting for one in five of all new jobs; the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) estimates that closures have cost 44,000 jobs over the past five years, and 43,000 are projected to be lost over the next five. There have been 37 major brewery closures, accounting for 25% of all brewery employees. In 2008 alone, 13 pub operators, operating 960 pubs, have gone into administration.
The coffin in the front room would be unusual, though. Colm Powell, 44, the publican, has just ended a 10-day hunger strike, during which he slept in the coffin every night in a rococo but heartfelt protest against rising rents, beer prices, and fines imposed by the pub company, Enterprise Inns, that owns the pub. Last Friday he was served with an eviction notice, and at 11am on November 11, he will lose the business he has run for 17 years, and with it his social life and his home, because he lives above it. On November 1 he intends to go on hunger strike again. Out the back, in the garden/smokers' area, where his grapes have ripened dark and juicy and a tomato plant defies the coming autumn, he is subdued and quietly spoken, but determined. "When they come to take me they'll have to physically take me out in the box."
Coffin aside, he is part of an epidemic. According to the most recent figures from the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), 36 pubs are closing a week - five a day. In 2004, it was eight a week; two a week in 2005, and six a week in 2006. Kate Nicholls of the Association of Licensed
Multiple Retailers (ALMR, which represents anyone operating 50 or fewer bars or pubs), emphasises that these are net closures, so this is partly due to a sudden drop in numbers of openings. "In 2007 just over 1,000 new pubs opened, consistent since 2004. This year to date we've had 403 and I can't see it improving significantly by the end of the year." In the early 2000s, according to the ALMR, pubs were a major source of employment, accounting for one in five of all new jobs; the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) estimates that closures have cost 44,000 jobs over the past five years, and 43,000 are projected to be lost over the next five. There have been 37 major brewery closures, accounting for 25% of all brewery employees. In 2008 alone, 13 pub operators, operating 960 pubs, have gone into administration.
