Brewing giant pursuing Manchester’s smallest pub for £90,000 in rent

The Circus Tavern on Portland Street is one of the best loved pubs in Manchester. It also holds the claim of being the smallest pub in Europe, with patrons sitting cheek-by-jowl inside the tiny, but perfectly formed two-room hostelry.

But its owner Barry Hayes has said that he’s still locked in a row over rent with the pub’s landlords, Star Pubs & Bars, owned by brewing giant Heineken, more than a year after they told him he owes over £90,000, despite being closed and unable to operate during lockdown.

Star Pubs, which Barry calls ‘horrible people, absolute parasites’, are pursuing him for rent in a ‘David and Goliath’ battle that is heading for arbitration, he says. “They want full rent off me for a period of time when I wasn’t open for 14 months, which I think is absolutely diabolical. But they just don’t care about you,” he told the Manchester Evening News.

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“I gave them £1,000 a month while I was closed. How can you charge me for the rent in the pub, when I’ve not been able to work? Even when social distancing came about, it wasn’t worth opening because of the two metre rule. You’d have only been able to seat four people in the front and four people in the back, it wasn’t viable.

“It’s left a sour taste in the mouth. They’re the second biggest brewery in the world, and it’s David versus Goliath, and they couldn’t care less. They’re just trying to take me to the cleaners... these aren't brewery people. They're bankers, basically, and this is just another easy way of making money. I'd never get into bed with a brewery ever again.”

Barry says that Star Pubs, with whom he still has a seven-and-a-half year lease