Wyre Forest pub bosses slam outdoor smoking ban plans

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that the government would “take decisions” on a potential outdoor smoking ban to curb preventable deaths and alleviate pressures on the NHS.

Reacting to the potential ban, Wayne Barber, landlord at the Chester Tavern in Kidderminster said: "I think it's going to be very damaging to the pub trade potentially".

The beer garden at the Chester Tavern (Image: Wayne Barber)

He said that smoking outside pubs and other establishments has become an "accepted part of life."

He said: "After the smoking ban, pubs did a great job of adapting their environments to accommodate smokers in outside areas that were sheltered and this has now become the norm.

"It’s a challenging industry to work in at the best of times and it would be a real shame if this decision was made without further consultation.

"It will be detrimental to trade and add more uncertainty by making this move in my opinion".

Alex McLoughlin, the landlord of Stourport's Bridge Inn, added: “I am completely against the notion of this ban and haven’t spoken to a single person that supports it.

Alex McLoughlin at the Bridge Inn beer garden (Image: Alex McLoughlin)

"Pubs are struggling enough as it is and I think to impose any further restrictions over public houses could be the nail in the coffin for the industry, I remember how much the initial smoking ban affected venues but to suggest now imposing legislation to restrict people's freedom to smoke in beer gardens is ludicrous and will just drive more people to stop going out potentially destroying the night-time economy of town centres across the country.”

Katie McPhilimey, the marketing director of Davenports Brewery, which runs the Post House in Kidderminster and Port House in Stourport, said: “It beggars’ belief that they can even consider a ban on smoking in pub back gardens, it is yet another burden on an industry that is already over legislated and facing rising costs, it would be another nail in the coffin of the pub industry.

To dictate how we run our businesses and to take away a person’s freedom of choice – social freedoms - is just another step closer to becoming a nanny state.

When they banned smoking inside pubs in 2007, many pubs closed, and those that remained open noticed a 15-20% decline in turnover.

Banning smoking in pub gardens won’t stop people smoking, it will simply drive them to socialise at home where they are free to smoke, that isn’t educating people on health matters, that is ostracising people, our customers and destroying businesses.

"During Covid pubs had to invest heavily in outdoor spaces to survive, those investments in our pub gardens at the Post House and Port House were made in good faith and built into a business plan that is required to make a return for our business and it appears there is no acknowledgement for the costs attached to providing these spaces, or the devastating impact that legislating them in such a way would have on the industry.”

The Bridge Inn beer garden (Image: Alex McLoughlin)

Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon, which runs the George Hotel pub in Bewdley, was less critical of the policy from a business point of view, instead calling it a “libertarian issue”.

He said Wetherspoon was the first pub group to open non-smoking pubs before the 2007 smoking ban, adding: “The rationale then was that non-smokers should be free to avoid passive smoking. That argument is diluted outside.”