Britain's pubs are being ‘taxed out of existence'. Can Clarkson's Farm help?

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2 days ago

Jeremy Clarkson seems determined to find an answer to that age-old question: how do you make a small fortune? After he first tried by starting with a large fortune and buying a farm, he then turned his attention to running a pub, that other once-great British totem that has fallen on hard times. Perhaps an airline or football club is next.
In the latest series of Clarkson's Farm, which chronicles the petrol-head's life as he brings his Top Gear sensibility to the Oxfordshire countryside, we see him attempt to transform a knackered old boozer off the A40 into a thriving pub that serves the produce of local farms.
On the hunt for his ideal site, as chronicled on Prime Video, Clarkson sees a staggering number of pubs that are either up for sale or have been left empty by owners unable to make ends meet. Things do not get off to a great start: one has so many health-and-safety signs which assault his senses as he crosses the threshold that he immediately feels unwelcome.
'What's stark about his search for his pub is just how many pubs are vacant or available,' says Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) who lives near the presenter in the Cotswolds. 'As Clarkson says, 'What would a village be without its village pub? It would just be a collection of houses.''
After deciding to buy The Windmill in the market town of Burford – which he has since opened and renamed The Farmer's Dog – last July, Clarkson solicits advice from his celebrity friends about what challenges await him as he tries to turn his 'farm-to-fork' idea from a dream into reality. We see Piers Morgan – whom he once thumped on Concorde – warn him that punters will almost certainly try to steal things, from cutlery and salt shakers to the art off the walls. James Blunt says he will have to worry about drink-drivers and struggles hiring staff. Clarkson's erstwhile Top Gear chum, James May, droned on about how expensive everything was, especially accountancy fees, insurance premiums and employee wages.
But it was film director Guy Ritchie who put it in the starkest terms, when he warned that sometimes 'it looks like you're making £50k a week but it transpires you're losing £10k a week'.
No wonder, then, that the number of British pubs is collapsing. There were more than 60,000 pubs in Britain at the turn of the millennium, but today that number has fallen by a quarter to 45,000, according to the BBPA. Publicans have had to put up with steeper taxes, the pandemic lockdowns, surging energy prices and, most recently, Rachel Reeves's hike in National Insurance contributions on employers, which has pushed up staff costs. The BBPA estimates that £1 in every £3 taken at the bar goes straight to the taxman: of the surviving pubs and bars, one-third are operating at a loss as a result of being so heavily taxed, the UK Hospitality trade group reckons.
So it is perhaps no surprise that Clarkson found so many pubs available to buy when he started looking. 'There are always, sadly, businesses that fail: you will always get closures in any given year. Normally you would expect them to be brought back to life. The cost pressures that the Chancellor has imposed make that impossible,' says Kate Nicholls, UK Hospitality's chief executive. 'What Clarkson's demonstrating is this is the most highly taxed, highly regulated sector of the economy, and we're taxing too many businesses out of existence altogether.'
Pubs can be a money sink, meaning that any aspiring pint-pullers do need some serious cash to get things going in the first place. Clarkson, for instance, was told by his surveyor before buying the pub that he would need to spend £150,000 to repair the roof and £100,000 to upgrade the lavatories. In typical fashion, he ignores all of this advice – saying that such surveys were an exercise in 'a--e-covering' – and sets about trying to do up his pub at six weeks' notice with a budget of no more than £25,000.
And yet, as has become routine in his series, it turns out to be much more complicated than that. For instance, having assumed that his kitchen was good to go, he was told that he might have to spend as much as £100,000 upgrading the kit – including a £7,000 oven – which could be cut to about £40,000 if he bought refurbished goods. Rachel Hawkins, a consultant Clarkson employs to help him get his pub up and running, tells him that managing a hostelry is more complicated than it looks. 'You see a smiley waitress pulling a pint. That is about 1 per cent of it.'
The fact that Clarkson struggles so much underlines how precarious the wider industry is. 'What the programme highlights very well is that if you've got a lot of money and you've got that name, then you can probably try to make a go of it; you can take one of these sites and turn it around, but it's going to need a lot of investment behind it,' says Nicholls. 'Even then, it's still difficult to make a profit and do the altruistic thing of supporting local farmers.'
Clarkson's Farm has been lauded for putting the struggles regular farmers face firmly on the agenda. Tim Martin, the founder of Wetherspoons, who is probably Britain's most successful publican, tells me that he hopes what Clarkson has done for farmers could be replicated with the nation's pub landlords – especially when it comes to getting the Government's attention.
'The fact that Clarkson has been frank about the great complexity and costs involved in running a pub is a huge benefit for the industry,' he says. 'Ministers tend to regard pubs as a milch cow that can endure further taxes or regulations ad infinitum. However, thanks to Clarkson's report from the front line, the plight of pubs is becoming clear.'
Kris Gumbrell, the founder of Brewhouse & Kitchen, a chain of 21 bars with 500 staff, says that he has been 'addicted' to watching Clarkson's show and reading his stories about running the pub. And he admits that he has raised a 'wry smile' when he hears about issues Clarkson has had – such as sky-high energy bills – that he has also experienced.
'I'm watching it, and a lot of the challenges he's [had] resonate with people in the sector. The good thing is, he's drawing attention to problems that a lot of publicans have, a lot of people in the pub industry are encountering every day and have been for some time,' Gumbrell says. 'It's a great industry and I'm pleased that Jeremy Clarkson has jumped into it, but I've seen his woes and we've all been there.'
Having the reality of running a pub depicted in such a popular series – with a figure as famous as Clarkson behind the bar – will also educate punters about how hard the graft can be. 'From a guest point of view, opening up the workings of a pub and to understand what really goes on behind the scenes – the pressures and the challenges we have every day – are good for the guests to understand,' Gumbrell says.
'Everybody knows how to run a pub until they get one. Everybody's got an opinion about how a pub should be run, but it's very different when you're actually at the coal face with your hand in your pocket or writing those cheques. He's very good at exposing the realities.'
Though there are so many challenges that publicans face – with pubs closing down every week – those remaining in the industry are a resilient bunch and have a habit of trying to accentuate the positives. 'Despite everything, Clarkson still opened his pub. He still wants to have that, he still wants to serve the community,' says the BBPA's McClarkin. 'There is something in it that makes it worthwhile. People still do want to go to the pub. There is still demand there.'
She adds: 'We need to lean in and get behind them. I really hope the programme – just as it did for farming – begins to open everybody's eyes about how you run a pub, how difficult it is and what support we need.'
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