Licensed premises fall

Licensed premises down on March levels as openings stall

Britain now has nearly 25,000 fewer licensed premises open than before the COVID-19 lockdown, the latest Market Recovery Monitor from CGA and AlixPartners reveals.

The exclusive report shows the scale of the pandemic’s impact on the country’s on-trade. It also highlights its vulnerability ahead of major new restrictions on trading in Scotland - where 8,000 licensed premises are subject to closures and severe new limits on trading. Similar measures are expected to be announced by the Government for many areas of northern England.

One area expected to fall under these new restrictions, the North East, is the UK region with the highest percentage of pubs, bars and restaurants trading again, according to the report. The region is nearest to pre-pandemic capacity with 83.8% of sites now reopened.

The Market Recovery Monitor shows that just over 90,000 premises around Britain were trading by the end of September—a net increase of nearly 4,000 sites in a month. But the figure is sharply down on the 15,500 sites that opened during August, when rising consumer spending and the popularity of the government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme incentivised many operators to return. Openings slowed in September after business and consumer confidence was dented by new trading restrictions. The current trading total compares to around 115,000 licensed premises recorded by CGA in March.

The Market Recovery Monitor shows that pubs have been much quicker to reopen than restaurants, and more than nine in ten are now back trading. But with ongoing measures including distancing and curfew requirements making conditions much tougher for late-night operators, fewer than three quarters (73.2%) of all known bars and barely half (56.2%) of nightclubs are trading. The sports and social club sector (63.0%) has also been severely

affected by limits on socialising.

In the restaurant sector, nearly nine in ten (87.3%) casual dining venues are now open. But with many leading brands announcing CVAs or closure programmes, there are now 1,200 fewer sites than there were in March.

The report also emphasises significant challenges to independent