High costs close our local pubs
With reference to your article in Tuesday's Shropshire Star about the Swan public house at Waters Upton, this is yet another Punch Taverns pub which has gone to the wall.
The Punch Taverns Pub Company, another name for venture capitalists, has a habit of spending about £300,000 doing up these little country pubs, charging an extortionate fee to buy the lease and then charging in the region of £1,000 per week rent on top.
This, together with a business rate of perhaps £8,000 per year, utility bills and staff wages must surely mean that the licensee has to taking somewhere in the region of £5,000 per week just to break even.
This amount of income may seem reasonably achievable to these companies for a pub based in a city with plenty of customers within easy reach either by foot or public transport, but in small villages, like Waters Upton, High Ercall and Rodington, these are surely pie in the sky figures.
The companies have a stranglehold on the licensee who has to buy his beer from them at greatly inflated prices. To local people on low and fixed incomes, the addition of 70p a pint is a lot of money.
I feel that it is high time for this Government to take a long hard look at these companies and the restrictive practices which they operate.
David Nicklin, High Ercall
