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The pace of pub closures is speeding up despite growing signs that the recession could be over.
Pub trade bodies have been claiming recently that about 40 pubs are shutting every week, at which rate the last boozer in Britain would call time in 2037.
Speaking this week at a conference for the pub trade one industry expert said this has now increased to more than 50 closures - 2600 a year - of a total of about 58,000.
Jon Collins, the chief executive of CGA Strategy, reported the higher figure at the Tenanted Pub Company Summit this week.
This suggests that the pub trade has yet to benefit from the supposed green shoots of economic recovery.
The industry says higher government taxes and cheap supermarket booze are killing trade.
Some landlords say the structure of much of the sector, where publicans take out a lease from a large pubco which then charges them higher rates for beer than they could get on the open market, is also to blame.
The two biggest pub companies, Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns, faced down talk earlier this year that they could go bust.
The share prices of both companies have recovered lately as investors bet that they would manage their way through the turmoil by refinancing debt and selling off some assets.
Reader views (4)
HIGHER GOVERNMENT TAXES AND CHEAP SUPERMARKET BOOZE IS NOT THE MAIN REASON PUBS ARE CLOSING. THE SMOKING BAN WHICH MEANS PEOPLE HAVE TO SPEND HALF THEIR EVENING OUTSIDE IN THE COLD AND RAIN(THIS DOES NOT APPEAL TO MOST!) MEANS MILLIONS HAVE STOPPED GOING TO PUBS. SOMEONE PLEASE WAKE UP!
- Dominic, Birmingham
The smoking ban is killing them off, I have stopped going now because my friends are always outside smoking, pubs are lonely if you dont smoke.
- Rob, Rock Ferry Wirral
Most of the pubs shutting down seem to be the awful ones nobody wanted to use anyway, whether through neglect, bad management, poor location etc.
Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns are ridiculous companies built up in the age of cheap debt, not much more than estate agents. Hope they have to sell all their best pubs back to the breweries like Fullers, Greene King etc so the pubs will be back where they should be.
- Paxton Pat, London
Green Shoots? MMMMMM whilst I understand we should talk things up, at best I suspect we are in a hiatus.....
- Chris Smiles, London
