Pubs Are Being Asked to Do More While Being Charged More
Why Business Rates, Not Licensing Hours, Are the Real Crisis for Hospitality
Pubs matter. In towns and villages like Penistone, they are more than businesses. They are meeting places, employers, community anchors and often one of the last remaining social hubs.
That is why recent calls for pubs to stay open later and expand their offer feel increasingly disconnected from reality.
Because the real issue facing hospitality is not licensing hours.
It is survival.
Mother Shipton Inn
What Publicans Are Facing Right Now
Across the UK, pubs are closing at a rate not seen for years.
In 2025, an average of one pub per day permanently closed across England and Wales. In total, 366 pubs were lost in a single year, reducing the number of pubs from 38,989 to 38,623 .
These are not temporary closures. Most are being converted into housing or other uses and rarely return as pubs.
Industry bodies point squarely to business rates as a core driver.
According to UKHospitality, even after transitional relief, the average pub will pay around £12,900 more in business rates over the next three years compared with previous bills .
At the same time:
Covid-era business rates relief is being phased out
Energy costs remain historically high
Staffing costs continue to rise
Consumer spending is under pressure
For many publicans, this is not a short-term squeeze. It is a structural problem.
When Business Rates Double Overnight
High-profile cases have helped expose what many smaller pubs are quietly facing.
Chef and pub owner Tom Kerridge has confirmed that:
One pub saw business rates rise from £50,000 to £124,000
Another rose from £50,500 to £106,000
Across four pubs, increases averaged around 115 percent
Kerridge said publicly that such increases wipe out wages and make continuing to trade questionable.
The key point is this:
If nationally recognised operators are struggling with these figures, independent local landlords have no buffer at all.
Yorkshire and the Barnsley Context
UK Pubs under Pressure
Yorkshire and the Humber followed the national trend in 2025, with dozens of pubs lost across the region as costs escalated .
Barnsley, Penistone and surrounding villages are not high-footfall city centres. Trade is finite. Margins are tight. When a pub closes here, it rarely reopens.
Local publicans are reporting:
Rateable values rising sharply after revaluation
Relief tapering year by year
Increased risk that otherwise viable pubs become unviable purely due to fixed costs
This is why conversations focused on later opening hours ring hollow.
Why Licensing Reform Misses the Point
Calls to modernise licensing often include:
Staying open later
More live music
Easier outdoor events
In isolation, these sound positive.
But they do not address the core issue.
Later opening hours do not reduce business rates.
Live music does not halve a tax bill.
Longer days do not fix a broken cost base.
For many pubs, staying open longer simply means losing money for more hours.
The Question That Needs Answering
As one of Barnsley’s MPs, and the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, Marie Tidball is right to talk about the importance of pubs.
But the hard question remains:
Why is the biggest fixed cost facing pubs being allowed to spiral, while attention is placed on doing more with less?
If pubs truly matter, business rates reform has to come first.
Not as a future aspiration.
Not after consultations.
But now.
A Call for Practical Action, Not Warm Words
Publicans are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for fairness.
Until business rates are addressed honestly and urgently, discussions about later opening hours will continue to miss the point.
Business rates reform is not a side issue for hospitality.
It is the issue.
We have had enough spin, we won’t be hoodwinked and we certainly won’t stand for being gaslit ever again.
