Thousands of pubs could close because it is not “viable” for landlords to raise the price of a pint to £15 or £20 to cover their soaring energy bills.
Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), told the Daily Star the cost of a pint would have to rise to “ridiculous” amounts to match the increase in running costs that pub landlords now face.
He said some pubs were seeing bills go up by 500% to 600%.
A Camra survey this summer found that more than half of the British public think that the cost of a pint is already unaffordable.
“What you can say with surety is you can’t possibly pass on these energy increases and you can’t increase the pint by 500%,” Stainer told the paper. “Thousands could be affected by this, and they can close – the difference with other sorts of businesses is once a pub closes, it very rarely comes back.”
Stainer called on the UK Government to take action and support the hospitality industry by reviewing energy costs, business rates and beer tax.
His warning follows BrewDog's announcement last week that it will close six pubs - three in Scotland and three in London - over its rising energy bills, with chief executive James Watt criticising the government for being “clueless”.
He followed that LinkedIn post with another over the weekend, attempting to set out some solutions to the problem facing the new Prime Minister this week. These included:
1. Reverse the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions introduced in April.
2. Cut business rates in half for a year, "or better still make them zero".
3. Give a VAT holiday to hospitality businesses for a year.
4. State-backed loans with repayments beginning sometime next year.
5. Extend the household energy cap approach by implementing an energy price cap for businesses as soon as is practically possible.
Watt added: "The nay-sayers will claim this is just an industry after state money - but I guarantee you the government will end up paying for this one way or another.
"For me, it is better spending on supporting business through this nightmare and helping them to manage costs over the longer term, than spending the money on unemployment benefits and all the rest of it when tens of thousands of businesses inevitably collapse."
Bosses of six of the UK’s biggest pub and brewing companies - including Greene King, Carlsberg Marston’s and Drake & Morgan - have also signed an open letter to the UK Government, urging it to act to avoid “real and serious irreversible” damage to the sector.
Meanwhile, British Chambers of Commerce president Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith warned that two thirds of pubs will shut this winter unless help is given to tackle rising costs.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “We cannot be in a situation where more and more businesses are shutting down because of costs that are absolutely outside their control.
"They’ve come out of Covid, they’ve already got loans, they’ve already got higher costs from National Insurance; there still isn’t a reduction on VAT.”
The Conservative peer said measures suggested by Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, including reductions in VAT and business rates for retail and hospitality, tax breaks for energy intensive industries, are the “right territory” to help people this winter, but still stated: “Unless there is immediate and urgent support, we will see many businesses close their doors this winter.”
The British Chambers of Commerce has forecast that the UK will enter into a recession before the end of 2022.
McGregor-Smith said she has not spoken to Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss about the future of businesses in light of rising costs, and when asked if she had spoken to either of them about their plans, she responded: “No, I’ve only had conversations with Rishi Sunak during the pandemic about the support required then.
“We haven’t had any recent conversations, but we’ve laid out very clearly what we would like to see happen over the coming days.”
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