A one-off payment of £1,000 to wet-led pubs to help them through Christmas has been branded derisory by the hospitality industry.

Left to right: Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality; James Calder, chief executive of SIBA; and Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association

The payment was announced by the prime minister today as he led a debate on plans to introduce new tier regulations across England from midnight tonight.

James Calder, chief executive of the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), said: “Today’s £1,000 grant is a derisory gesture for wet-led pubs that have struggled throughout this crisis. During the Christmas period, many of these pubs would expect to take £1,000 in a couple of hours.

“These pubs never benefited from the much-lauded hospitality VAT cuts, which don’t include alcohol, and the Eat Out To Help Out scheme, which only included food. On top of this, there was yet again nothing for small breweries who rely heavily on wet pubs for their sales and who lost 80% of their income during covid. 

“The prime minister should follow the examples we have seen in Northern Ireland, where business rates holidays have been extended to businesses like breweries and support for wet-led pubs provided, and in Wales, which includes financial support for those who have lost sales. 

“The government needs to urgently rethink its support measures for struggling small brewers and provide full financial grants, business rates holidays, and end the proposed changes to small breweries relief to help the sector.”

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, said: “£1,000 on its own is a meagre amount for pubs to cover nine weeks of costs, let alone compensate them for the huge loss of business over the festive period. It is, quite frankly, an insult to thousands of pubs across the UK that are on their knees.

“It barely touches the sides of what pubs up and down the country require to cover their costs and ensure they survive. Nor does it recognise the inherent danger they are in heading into the next year without more support, should the tighter tier system remain unchanged.”

‘It falls far short of the bare minimum required to keep these businesses alive’

McClarkin added: “This December, the average pub will lose £47,000 in revenue. A £1,000 payment is not even a sticking plaster. The current monthly grants to pubs have to be increased significantly if pubs are to survive and be able to play a role in the new year in leading the economic recovery and serving their local communities.

“The tighter tier restrictions go well into next year, they are not just for Christmas. Our sector needs more long-term support to ensure its survival, or else more than 30,000 pubs — 80% of those in England — are at risk of closing for good if this is all the government is going to offer.”

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said: “A one-off payment of £1,000 for pubs forced to close does not even count as a token gesture. Equivalent to just 1.1% of last year’s takings, it falls far short of the bare minimum required to keep these businesses alive.

“The government’s entire approach to this lacked any sliver of logic, as evidenced by the farcical debate around Scotch eggs over the past 24 hours. There needs to be a much clearer and supportive approach from the government, and this means providing far more support immediately.

“The government’s new tier system condemns nine out of ten hospitality businesses to being unviable by the New Year. This is not just a threat to community wet-led pubs, but also neighbourhood restaurants, independent hotels, nightclubs, and other hospitality venues who are now staring failure in the face. The sector will lose £8bn of revenue in December and bear £0.3bn of costs of closure and restricted trading.”

Nicholls added: “The government’s own figures say a third of businesses are at risk of insolvency, jeopardising over a million jobs and threatening collapse across the supply chain.

“The prime minister himself said that he was asking hospitality to bear a disproportionate burden to allow the re-opening of all other parts of the economy and pay for our festive bubbles, but the compensation is derisory. It is vital that they bring forward a more comprehensive package of emergency and long-term support to stave off the collapse of the third largest sector and export earner — a sector vital to our economic recovery.”