Campaigns

VATs the problem is a united, sector-wide campaign calling on the Government to cut VAT on hospitality from 20% to 10%. It is backed by UKHospitality, the British Beer & Pub Association, the British Institute of Innkeeping and others, and championed by chef Tom Kerridge. Since its public launch in July 2026 it has passed 300,000 signatures.

The argument is simple. Pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants are being squeezed by rising costs, including energy, food and drink inflation, wages, National Insurance and business rates, all on top of one of the highest VAT rates in Europe. In the Republic of Ireland the equivalent rate is now 9%. Cutting VAT to 10% would be one of the single most effective levers the Government could pull to keep local pubs open and people in work.

Britain is still losing pubs for good. Government figures for England and Wales, analysed by tax specialists at Ryan, show that 366 pubs were demolished or converted to other uses during 2025, roughly one every single day. These are permanent losses, not seasonal closures: the buildings become housing, offices, shops or nurseries, and almost never return as pubs. By the end of the year the counted stock of pubs in England and Wales had fallen to 38,623. Across the UK as a whole, the British Beer & Pub Association counts more than 16,000 pubs lost since the year 2000.

A pub is rarely just a pub. It is often the last shared space in a village or on an estate: the place for the quiz night, the charity fundraiser, the wake, the first pint and the catch-up that would not happen anywhere else. When a pub goes, a piece of the community goes with it, and getting it back is far harder than keeping it open in the first place.

When a pub is valued by the people who use it, it can be nominated as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) with the local council. If an ACV-listed pub is then put up for sale, that listing triggers a moratorium: a protected window during which the pub cannot be sold to anyone else while local people organise, raise funds and prepare a bid, and in some cases take the pub into community ownership. Alongside ACV status, planning protections and a strong local campaign can be the difference between a pub reopening and a pub lost. This is where a CAMRA branch can help, and where you can too.

For generations, a handpump on the bar has meant one thing: cask ale, delivered to the pub as a living product and looked after in the cellar by people who know what they are doing. It is a signal that drinkers trust. That signal is now being blurred.

Carlsberg Marston’s has begun putting “Fresh Ale”, a keg product that arrives ready to serve from the factory, through traditional cask handpumps. It is dispensed like cask and marketed as preserving the hand pull ritual, but it is not cask ale and has not been conditioned in the pub cellar. CAMRA’s Handpump Hijack campaign is about protecting what the handpump stands for, so that when you order a pint pulled by hand you know what you are getting. It matters locally too: every keg line dressed up as cask is a genuine cask line, and the cellar skill behind it, quietly slipping away.

Alongside the campaigns above, CAMRA runs national celebrations through the year, and the branch has its own regular milestones. Here is what to look out for, month by month. Specific dates go in our branch diary as soon as they are confirmed.