Pub trade ponders price increases

Drinkers are being confronted by a bewildering array of different price increases as licensees and pub operators react to the Budget changes.

Rises range from a basic 5p a pint (4p duty plus VAT) to as much as 20p, as hosts combine recent wholesale beer rises and the duty hike with adjustments to their own margins.

Many managed operators will charge customers the basic 5p although one company, Manchester-based JW Lees, has decided to absorb the VAT element of the increase and has urged its tenants to do the same.

The Laurel Pub Company this week imposed a flat-rate 10p rise on beer, lager, cider and spirits.

The company said the increase includes a previous brewery rise that it did not pass onto its pubs.

"We were fairly sure we were going to get clobbered in the Budget and we were not wrong,"​ said chief executive Ian Payne.

One small brewer and pub operator, Nottingham-based Castle Rock, will also absorb all the Budget increases in its 20 venues.

Managing director Chris Holmes said he wanted to ensure drinkers still visited his outlets.

Greene King and Brains have both passed on the basic 5p increase across their managed estates.

Punch said it would be passing on increases to its Spirit managed estate on a pub-by-pub basis "appropriate to the local market"​.

Wholesale Budget price increases will be passed on in full to its lessees.

Enterprise Inns lessee Anita Adams said prices at her Golden Slipper pub in York would rise a minimum of 10p and could go up by as much as 20p.

"We have not done our final calculations, but we always aimed to do one single increase after the Budget was announced,"​ she said.

Host Matt Jackson, who runs freehouses in Lancaster and Barrow-in-Furness, predicted increases of 15p a pint.

"We have held back until after the Budget,"​ he said.