Pubs could danger serving heat beer by switching off fridges in a single day to chop vitality payments
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s new tool to reduce costs branded ‘short-sighted, bureaucratic, headline-grabbing load of rubbish’
Pub bosses have been issued the advice(Image: Getty Images)
Pubs could risk serving warm beer by switching off bottle fridges overnight to cut energy bills.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has launched an advice tool he believes will help ease rising costs for Britain’s ailing hospitality businesses.
It encourages firms to reduce unnecessary electricity use by turning off bottle fridges overnight and to monitor hotspots such as extraction systems, ovens and lamps. He reckons pouring warmer pints would reduce bills.
New analysis suggests that a spike in energy bills due to the Iran war will heap an extra £169m-a-year onto pubs’ costs. Wetherspoons chief Sir Tim Martin has said businesses will have no choice but to push up prices.
Landlords claim they are being quoted energy rates that are 30% higher than in February before the US and Israel attacked Iran. Oil prices have risen from £55-a-barrel before the strikes to around £75.
Industry leaders said the government tool would not save pubs from ‘eye-watering bills’ that were crippling hospitality businesses – with landlords ridiculing the suggestions as ‘groundbreaking stuff’.
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: “There are a host of appliances that you simply cannot turn off, many for health and safety reasons. So it is not just help with reducing eye-watering energy bills that the beer and pub sector needs the Government to help with but the overall cumulative costs of doing business including disproportionate tax bills.”
She said it was important to save cash where possible as a ‘typical pub’ would make just 12p profit on every £5 pint. A trial of the tool was overseen by tech firm Carbon Zero Services last year.
The company’s chief executive Mark Holden said: “When you put energy savings into real hospitality terms the impact becomes very clear. Saving around £2,000-a-year is the equivalent of the profit from selling thousands of pints or the breathing space that protects hard-won margins during quieter months.”
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero claimed the government-funded carbon-reduction tool had saved trial participants £48-a-week. It hopes to expand the trial to 525 more businesses.
But pub owner Andy Lennox urged ministers to slash VAT rates for hospitality firms rather than offer them simplistic energy-saving suggestions. He ran a campaign last year to ban Labour MPs from hospitality venues across the country which ultimately forced Labour to announce an emergency support package for pubs.
He said: “To be told to turn the lights off overnight really is groundbreaking stuff. Thank goodness someone in Whitehall finally cracked it.
“Decades of hospitality experience across the country and the answer was sitting there all along. In reality, this is yet another short-sighted, bureaucratic, headline-grabbing load of rubbish. Any half-decent operator already runs an efficient kitchen, manages energy properly and watches costs like a hawk. That is Hospitality 101.”
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