UK loses 19 hospitality venues a week, NIQ data shows
Licensed premises fell 1% to 98,319 in the year to September as closures outpaced openings, NIQ reports, even as this week's Budget offered only partial relief.
UK hospitality closures reached 977 in the year to September, about 19 venues a week, according to new data from NIQ.
The net figure leaves 98,319 licensed premises trading across Britain, down 1% year on year. The slide has accelerated: in the three months to the end of September alone, 2,436 venues closed, a rate of roughly 27 a day, against 2,191 openings. Many of the new arrivals take over the same unit a predecessor just vacated.
Casual dining takes the deepest cut
Nineteen venues close every week, and the Budget barely slows the count.
Casual dining is down 2.2% year on year and 23.4% since the start of the pandemic in 2020, as several leading restaurant brands have pulled back their estates. Quarter on quarter, the overall market contracted by 0.2%, or 245 sites, since June.
Accommodation has fared better. Licensed hotels rose 0.2% and holiday and caravan parks grew 0.7% over the same 12 months, which NIQ links to sustained demand for domestic breaks.
Karl Chessell, director of hospitality operators and food for EMEA at NIQ, pointed to what he called the pile-up of challenges facing the sector. "Meaningful support on this burden of costs is needed," he said.
NIQ's RSM Business Tracker shows managed groups posting sub-inflation sales growth for 16 consecutive months. Its own Business Confidence Survey found just 37% of operators optimistic about the next year.
Budget relief lands short of a fix
This week's Autumn Budget gave operators some room: the small business rate relief threshold for hospitality, retail and leisure rises from £12,000 to £18,000, and VAT stayed untouched. The National Minimum Wage climbs 3.9% and now covers staff aged 18 to 20, adding to payroll costs just as margins tighten.
Operators quoted by trade press called the measures "a missed opportunity" and said they were "simply not enough to save our haemorrhaging industry." The sector heads into the Christmas and New Year trading period, its best chance to recover ground, with costs still rising faster than sales.
NIQ frames the figures as a sector still adjusting to a higher cost base rather than one in freefall: openings nearly match closures in raw numbers, even if many simply swap one operator for another in the same shell. Whether that churn settles into stability, or keeps grinding down the net total, depends largely on how far wage and energy costs climb from here.
