Scottish pubs crash: one in five shuts in half a decade
By: JimOldfield
September 30th, 2012
While Scotland’s big independent brewers are ploughing cash into massive expansion plans, one in five Scottish pubs shut its doors in the past five years – with rural pubs in a nosedive, a new study has reported.
The “Local Pub; Local Hub” report, carried out for Molson Coors, says that a massive 703 community pubs closed in the five-year period – taking the number down by 18 per cent – while just 55 opened.
And in total, 1,190 pubs across the country closed between 2007-2012, a fall of 19.8 per cent – or one in five of the national pub stock. Again, just 269 new pubs opened.
The report, by CR Consulting, showed that Scotland’s rural communities had been hardest hit by closures.
Argyll and Bute alone saw 42 pubs close in the five-year period,with six other rural constituencies reporting 30 per cent drops in that time.
Publicans who took part in the survey blamed cheap supermarket and off-licence ales – but also bizarrely claimed that a decline in beer choice was a factor.
And 76 per cent of drinkers surveyed glumly said they thought the closures would continue.
That said, almost a third of Scots visited their local at least twice a month and a quarter of the customers were women, the survey found.
At the public launch of the report, Molson Coors’ Scotland MD Phil Whitehead added his voice to those demanding an end to the beer tax escalator, adding also that business rates for pubs should be brought into line with other kinds of enterprises, while licensing red tape should be relaxed to encourage more entrepreneurs into the pub trade.
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