Pubs heading for ‘absolute disaster’ says Sacha Lord as inflation set to BATTER hospitality

Manchester’s night time economy advisor Sacha Lord is calling on the chancellor to reduce VAT back to its pandemic discount rate of 5%, as inflation soars to a record 40 year high. He said that the hospitality sector is heading for ‘an absolute disaster’ unless the government acts quickly to counter soaring bills for bars, pubs, restaurants and hotels.

“My phone is off the hook at the moment. The overall feeling, certainly from the independents, is that at least during lockdown one, there was support there, furlough, business rates relief, bounceback loans, but no one expected this,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “Sadly, it’s the operators in more deprived areas who are going to be hit hardest. The backstreet boozers and the community pubs.

“In Greater Manchester, there are 1806 ‘wet-led’ pubs, so pubs that don’t serve food, and the vast majority are in our most deprived areas, and obviously if you’ve got the choice of buying a pint, or eating and heating, I don’t blame people for having to make that choice.”

Lord tweeted yesterday that an emergency budget is needed from the chancellor, and that hospitality was ‘facing another cliff edge’. One hotel and pub owner from Durham replied in the comments beneath: “I have witnessed a massive, and consistent drop in sales past month or so. The average pub was intended to accommodate the hard working class. The hard working class are really, really feeling the pinch in their pockets as inflation hits 9%. Going to the pub is now a real treat.”

Lord, who is behind the Warehouse Project and the Parklife festival, added that he’s heading to London in two weeks for meetings with hospitality trade bodies, with plans to lobby the government to drop VAT to either 12.5 percent, or