Landlady gives up pub as quarterly energy bills near £30,000

A village pub landlady has decided to give up her business after her energy bills hit nearly £30,000 a quarter.

Miranda Richardson said she would leave the Live and Let Live pub in Harpole, Northampton, after her three-month gas bill hit more than £7,700.

The landlady said her next electricity bill from March to May was currently "just shy of £20,000".

She is one of many grappling with the rising costs of running businesses at a time when people are watching budgets.

Households have been hit by higher energy bills, with the energy price cap - which limits how much suppliers can raise prices - going up in April to £1,971 for the typical user.

But there is no such cap on energy bills for businesses, "so they can't predict from one month to the next what that bill is going to look like", said Hannah Essex, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).

Ms Richardson told the BBC she loved running her pub, but that it was no longer sustainable due to her energy bills and so she will end her tenancy in August.

Her gas bill for the February, March and April in 2021, totalled just over £1,500 for the three months - £6,200 less than her current bill.

To break even following her most recent gas bill and other costs, Ms Richardson said on Twitter she would have to sell "roughly 1,400 pints of lager".

"If I am honest at the moment I'm just about functioning," she said. "I love doing what I do… but I can't sustain it.

"I have worked as hard as I can possibly can. I will keep going until I shut the door. I do get upset about it and I do get sad but I didn't do it, this is not on me and that's the only way I can cope."

Ms Richardson said the Live and Let Live pub was a big pub, employing six bar and waiting staff as well as a chef.

She said it was costing the business almost £5,000 per week to "just open the doors", which was before she had bought beer or food to sell.

"In January it was about £2,700 a week… by March, that was sitting at £3,800," she added.

"It's not sustainable - certainly won't be sustainable through another hike (in energy bills) in October," she said.

"I'm in a wonderful village, but it's a village pub and I'm tucked away. What we are up against is not a question of saying to people 'Oh come out and use it', that's not the situation now because people are dealing with their issues, their own energy problems at home.

"When people may have come out three or four times before, that's not happening now and I fully understand why."

Ms Essex, of the BCC, said Ms Richardson was "not alone".

"In some cases, [businesses are] having to sign up to variable [energy] rates and in many cases, that's wiping out their margins."

The BCC has cut its forecast for growth in business investment to 1.8% for 2022, down from a previous forecast of 3.5%. It also expects zero growth in the UK's economy over the next two quarters, and predicts it will contract by 0.2% in the final three months of the year.

It said the investment downgrade reflected "heightened political and economic uncertainty, and rising cost pressures which are limiting smaller firms' abilities to invest".

The BCC added that its survey for business investment showed "no sign of recovery since the start of the Covid pandemic".