Swindon & North Wiltshire CAMRA branch highlights issues around pub closures

The Swindon & North Wiltshire branch of Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) says it is worrying how many pubs are closing their doors.

There are currently 267 pubs and clubs in the area – of which five percent are closed.

Across the UK, six pubs a week closed their doors in the last year, according to new figures from the British Beer and Pub Association.

Richard James, chair of CAMRA’s Swindon & North Wiltshire branch, said: “The last few years have been really tough for pubs and clubs because the cost of things have gone up substantially, especially energy costs.

“And the price of beer has gone up because producing beer is quite a lot of energy. So, the brewers have to charge more for their beer, which means the pub has to charge more for the beer. And then the pubs got to pay their own energy costs and their own staffing costs. So, the beer has gone up in in price quite a bit and obviously people think that's too much. They don't want to go to the pub as often as they used to.

“So, forces squeeze them in two directions. Inflation affecting people's incomes and that same inflation, but especially energy inflation, affecting the business and how much they their costs have gone up”.

Five pubs and clubs in Swindon and North Wiltshire have closed down permanently since 2022.

• The Inn with the Well, Ogbourne St. George (2024)
• The Duke of Edinburgh, Cricklade Road, Swindon (2023)
• The Plough, Lechlade Road, Highworth (2023)
• Cheekies (formerly the Groves Company), 22-23 Fleet Street, Swindon (2022)
• The Morris Street Workmens Club, 20/22 Morris Street, Swindon (2022)

An additional 14 are shut temporarily at the moment.

While ‘temporarily’ means that there is a possibility of the pub reopening at some point, there is no guarantee if or when that will be the case – as has been the case with the Red Lion in Axford, near Marlborough, for years.

‘Permanently’ on the other hand signals that a site can never come back as a pub because they were demolished or repurposed.

Mr. James stressed that while two pubs a year might not sound like much, it might mean the loss of a whole village’s meeting place.

“If you're in a town centre, you might not be affected. One pub closes – perhaps you know there's somewhere else close by. But if you're in a village or out of the town centre, then you don't really want the only pub that's in reasonable distance to close down, because it's quite a good community asset. It's quite a useful meeting place.

“If you have to travel, then you know you're not going to go out so much, so it's a loss of a social engagement point. You have less places for people to meet up in an informal way. Transport links aren’t necessarily all that good out in the countryside, and if your local pub closes, you might find that, actually, the bus service that will get you to the next pub, finishes at 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, which means that you effectively can't get to the pub and back by public transport”.

In 2016, planning regulations were tightened to make it harder for pubs to be repurposed for other uses.

Communities are able to register their local pubs as an asset of community value which means that locals have to be consulted before a new owner gets permission to change the land’s use.

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