The Chancellor certainly isn’t the Darling of pubs and beer drinkers. In his pre-Budget statement Alistair Darling rejected pleas to shield beer from the impact of the reversion to a 17.5% VAT rate in the New Year.

When VAT was reduced at the start of 2009 he put up beer duty by 8%, cancelling out the cut and making sure pubs could not reduce their prices. So by not taking off the 8% now, it’s effectively another duty hike for a struggling beer market. You can expect a pint at the bar to be an average 6p dearer from 6am on January 1.

Tied house drama continues
Drama unfurled at the Business Skills & Innovation Committee hearing into the tied house system, which forces pub tenants to buy beer from their landlord at

higher prices than the open market.

Committee chairman Peter Luff MP kicked off by telling the big pubcos he doesn’t like being threatened (by litigation, apparently) and said he wasn’t sure he could trust them.

A new code of practice is coming in that aims to ensure fairness and transparency between landlord and tenant, but the pub industry’s worst fear – legislation – still looks on the cards.

For more go to http://www.philmellows.com/PhilMellows_Diary_09_12_09.htm

More pubs bite the dust
Pub group Pubs ‘n’ Bars went into administration, closing a scattering of pubs across the South East. Temporarily, hopefully. The company operates 87 pubs, two-thirds of them directly managed, including the Hobgoblin chain.

Elizabeth Hotels, which has 13 pubs in East Anglia, was another recession casualty.

Cheer for small brewers
Small brewers are continuing to thrive, though. Moorhouses has begun work on a new £3.5 million brewery near its existing site in Burnley. It will treble capacity to 1,000 barrels.

And London’s Meantime also announced it will be doubling the size of its brewery in Greenwich at a cost of £1.5m.

Encore for Charles Wells
Bedford brewer and pub operator Charles Wells, which now brews Young’s beers too, turned in some decent figures under the circumstances and announced in would be opening its seventh French pub in Montpelier.

One expensive round
Blighty, a TV channel, I’d never heard of before, ran a series championing the British pub alongside the obligatory survey which showed on average we spend more than a year of our lifetime down the pub, spending an overdraft busting £65,249.

Not Ryan Kane, though. The Banbury man became the first person to be barred from pubs under the new Drinks Banning Order.

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