Companies: ETI   

Conservative tee-totallers need not fret, as the nightmare of 24-hour pubs is not real. So says the British Beer and Pub Association, which revealed only a tiny minority of pubs — 0.3 per cent — have been granted a 24-hour licence. Most have instead opted for a very modest increase in their opening hours, typically serving for an extra hour or two on Friday and Saturday nights.

And there is not likely be much change in pub and bar takings. Fully-listed Enterprise Inns, the largest leased and tenanted pub company in the UK, took the opportunity in its recent full-year results announcement to engage in some pertinent rhetoric, saying it does ‘not anticipate a material increase in turnover and profitability arising from the additional hours, simply a greater flexibility to allow responsible licensees better to serve the needs of their customers’. The hope, though, is that even if the increase in trading is slight, it will cover the extra costs of opening later.

The day after the first full day of the new licensing regime, the BBPA reported that the new laws mark ‘the start of a more sensible regime for pub opening and closing times in the UK’ rather than bringing about a move to 24-hour drinking. Of the 1,008 premises that have been handed a 24-hour licence — 0.5 per cent of total licences granted — only a third are pubs, clubs or bars, with reports suggesting none of these pubs will use them to the full extent.

The big question that remains unanswered though is this — what will the impact of later opening hours have on the operators of clubs whose USP was that they served booze after 11.00 pm when all the pubs had to close?