This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: British pubs are disappearing at an alarming rate. Last year, around eight closed down every week.
And it's not simply because people are drinking less. The crisis has been caused by the economics of running a pub. Our latest research suggests that Britain's pubs are suffering from rising costs, large debts and the changing priorities of large pub-owning companies.
Of course, the market changes. Younger people are drinking less, online socializing has expanded and supermarkets can sell alcohol at prices that pubs cannot hope to match. But it is too easy to dismiss so many pub closures as the inevitable consequence of changing tastes.
To do so would be to ignore the political choices and financial structures that are making things worse. We found, for example, that one of the biggest problems has been the rise of large pub companies (known as "pubcos") since the 1990s. These firms used a business model in which owning pubs became increasingly detached from brewing beer.
Large estates were assembled using substantial borrowing, with the buildings and their future cash flows underpinning the debt. That model looked attractive when interest rates were low and property values were rising. But it became much more fragile when borrowing costs rose, energy bills soared and customers had less money to spend.
In those circumstances, the pressure to service debt can take priority over a pub's survival. The problem is not that every large pub company is badly run, or that debt is inherently wrong. The problem is that a financial model built around property portfolios and debt can create incentives that conflict with the interests of tenants and communities.
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