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Two Pubs A Day, Gone. And Sick Pay From Day One Isn't Helping

ended 29. May 2026

Britain lost almost two pubs a day in the first three months of 2026, with 161 sites pulling down the shutters across England, Scotland and Wales — up 26% on the same quarter last year, and taking around 2,400 jobs with them.

That's according to the latest British Beer and Pub Association figures published earlier this month. The wider hospitality sector is bracing for more than 2,000 closures this year without business rates reform, according to UKHospitality.

The closures land in a perfect storm of cost. The 40% retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief ended on 31 March 2026. On 6 April, the national living wage rose to £12.71 an hour. The same day, Statutory Sick Pay became payable from day one with no three-day waiting period and no lower earnings limit — meaning every employee, however few hours they work, now qualifies from their first shift of sickness.

The government estimates the SSP reforms alone will add around £450 million a year to employer costs. The Federation of Small Businesses warns that the impact lands hardest on hospitality, retail and care, where short-term absence rates are already high. Day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave kicked in on the same date.

For a 12-person pub paying minimum wage, a handful of extra one-day absences each month is now real money. For a CEO of a 300-cover chain, it's a line item. The question is whether the rights that workers have wanted for a generation are arriving just as the businesses that employ them run out of headroom to absorb them.

We want your views:

  • Are the new day-one sick pay and family leave rights a long-overdue protection for workers, or the straw that's breaking small employers' backs? 
  • Should the Treasury have offered SMEs an SSP rebate to soften the £450m hit — and is it too late to bring one back? 
  • Hospitality bosses say business rates reform is the answer. Are they right, or is the closure rate really being driven by something else — energy, footfall, drinking habits?
  • If you run an SME, has day-one SSP changed your absence rate yet — or is it too soon to tell? 
  • Pubs employ a lot of young people. Where do the 2,400 lost jobs go next?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Let's be honest. Day-one sick pay didn't close 161 pubs. Years of rising costs, tired landlords and a country that drinks less did that. The reforms just turned up at the worst possible moment, bouquet in hand, on the day the wage bill jumped and rates relief walked out the door.
And the rights themselves? Long overdue. Nobody working a Sunday double should be dragging themselves in feverish because they can't afford to lose a shift. That helps no one. Not the team, not the customer, not the poor soul coughing into the pint glasses.
But small employers aren't villains for flinching. A 12-person pub doesn't have an HR budget, a finance team or a cushion. A short SSP rebate for under-50s would have cost the Treasury far less than the VAT, rates and benefits bill from another 2,000 closures.
Give workers the protection. Give employers a hand getting there. Otherwise we're cheering on rights for jobs that won't exist by Christmas.
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Mary Maguire
Managing Director at Astute Recruitment Ltd
Last orders for pubs, the hospitality sector and jobs unless the Government can raise their glasses to support a vital industry employing hundreds of thousands and generating billions for the UK economy! The business rates hike, the crushing employer NIC increases, the EBR reforms and minimum wage changes are a toxic cocktail for the pub sector. A pub is often much more than a drinks venue. It's the heart of many communities, villages and towns alike. Can we really afford 2 pubs a day closing? No. We cannot.
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Paul Denley
CEO at Oakham Wealth Management
The pressure on pubs is not coming from one policy alone. It is cumulative strain arriving all at once. Wage increases, employer costs, business rates, energy bills and shifting consumer habits are all hitting an industry that already operates on wafer thin margins.

Nobody serious would dispute the case for stronger worker protections. The question is who absorbs the cost. Large chains can treat incremental increases as a line item. For a 12 person pub paying minimum wage, a handful of extra one day absences each month is real money, particularly when margins have already been squeezed to the limit.

An SME rebate for Statutory Sick Pay would at least acknowledge that reality. Without it, there is a genuine risk that well intentioned reforms accelerate the losses in the very jobs they were designed to support, and younger workers, disproportionately employed in hospitality, are likely to feel that first.