Greene King boss: Pub industry ‘reaching breaking point’

The finance boss of Greene King has warned that soaring taxes and employment costs have pushed the UK’s hospitality industry to “breaking point”. Jonathan Fearn, finance chief of the privately-owned pub chain, said decisions taken by the Labour government have “created a cocktail of costs, which have made it ever harder for a pub to run its business.” The intervention from one of the UK’s biggest pub groups comes as John Healey faces rising pressure to curb the costs facing the hospitality industry at next week’s Budget. Writing in This Is Money, the Greene King boss urged the Chancellor to take action on a number of rising costs, including business rates, national insurance and VAT. Inflation has added £400m to the pub company’s business costs since 2019, Fearn said. In this time, hourly pay has increased by more than 60 per cent, while electricity, gas and water bills have risen by half. Greene King’s total business rates bill is £60m every year across its 1,500 pubs