8.0
GRIM REAPER OF PUBS England’s pubs have been closing steadily since the late nineteenth century and the ‘UK has lost 21,000 pubs since 1980. Half of these closures have taken place since 2006.’ 32 It is obvious from the number of closures in recent years that the financial crash has had a significant impact on the industry. Yet the issue has come under little scrutiny, with closures often viewed through an economist’s lens and attributed to inevitable changes in consumer habits. Whilst these rapid closures are blamed on a number of consumer-oriented and legislative factors such as the smoking ban, liquor licenses and the rise of cheap 20
supermarket beer 33, the decline of the pub is largely down to pub development’s close dependency on the housing market. Developers pursue a model of ‘highest and best use’ in order to maximise profit on each site, and many developers have paid particular interest to pubs abandoned derelict by PubCos after the financial crash. ‘The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) estimated in 2008 that a third of all shuttered pubs were converted into secondary businesses. Another third became residential properties. The final third were demolished.’ 34
