Punch Taverns freezes staff pay as recession bites deeper

Punch Taverns has confirmed it is freezing pay for all staff across the company, with the exception of its frontline bar teams.

The move comes as the pub operator looks to cut costs and save as much cash across the business as it can.

In a statement Punch said: "As part of our overhead cost review, we have taken the decision not to review salaries this year for all head office and salaried pub teams (including our group management board, our exec and our senior teams). This does not affect our hourly paid front line pub teams.

"We believe that this will help safeguard the future of our business and minimise the need to make further headcount reductions."

Punch said it remained "committed to ensuring that all of our people are rewarded competitively".

The pubco said it recognised its staff "are working incredibly hard in the current economic climate and, as a result, we will be making some adjustments to our bonus schemes where we feel this is necessary.

"Our priority is to ensure that we keep our cost base to a minimum and that we invest our time and resources in actively supporting our licensees and driving sales in our managed pub estate."

The pubco recently announced it was looking to make 100 jobs obsolete across its support team network, a process which is understood to be close to completion.

When contacted by ThePublican.com​ to see if it too was implementing a similar pay freeze Enterprise Inns declined to comment.