‘My pub won’t survive second lockdown after KCOM supporters ban’
LANDLORD SAYS THERE IS A CHANCE HIS WALTON STREET BOOZER MAY NOT REOPEN
A PUB landlord has admitted that should the country go into a full lockdown for a second time there is a good chance they may not reopen.
Stephen Merrylees, who has been running the Brickmakers Arms in Walton Street for around threeand-a-half years, says the financial loss of closing pubs again would be “drastic”.
The 32-year-old has already had to deal with a significant amount of loss due to the absence of spectators at the KCOM Stadium, a stone’s throw away from the front doors.
On top of that the Brickmakers Arms will lose “tens of thousands” due to Hull Fair being cancelled later this year.
With coronavirus cases on the rise again the threat of a full lockdown across the country has not been completely taken off the table.
Mr Merrylees says if it happens again there is a chance the Brickmakers Arms might not reopen.
“If we are going to have to shut completely are we going to get more help?” He said. “We started the new rules on Thursday and I think we are going to lose a lot of customers.
“It depends on how long we are in lockdown, but the loss earnings would be drastic. There is a good chance we won’t open again. It has already affected businesses around us.
“You have got the likes of the Walton Club which is only open three days a week for five to six hours max when they used to be open every day.
“When we reopened it was not too bad. The mood of everybody has been picking up with people thinking we are going to go back to normal.”
Things took a backwards step last week when the Prime Minister announced that all pubs, bars and restaurants would have to close by 10pm every night.
That means most pubs will lose out financially by missing out on a few hours of trade each night and the hope of getting back to normality has dwindled slightly.
“It does feel like a step backwards,” said Mr Merrylees.
“The atmosphere has dropped again. People were starting to hope we were going back to normal and taking small steps and it is just a big setback, not just for us but all businesses.”
Mr Merrylees also feels that the Government need to do more to help out the hospitality and latenight sectors which have struggled to keep up with the new rules.
He admits he has to step in at a few places who had no clue as to how to deal with the latest rules because there was very little information provided to them.
He said: “If they do go into lockdown they have not advised us on any potential help. They give us no information. We don’t get advice from anybody.
“When we went into lockdown before we only found out because I watched the telly. If I had not done that I would have looked stupid.
“They need to plan things out and give us advice and information because they don’t tell us anything. We know of a couple of pubs that are being checked, but how do they expect us to follow the rules if we don’t know 100 per cent what the rules are?
“We are putting these precautions in place and customers say to us they don’t need to do that in other places, but that is the way it works here. We had to put precautions in place just in case.
“If anybody walks in they can’t penalise us and say we didn’t put anything in place. We sort of have to use our common sense.
“For some who run a pub it would be all new to them. I have had to help a couple of businesses with adverts for social distancing and risk assessments and things like that because they don’t have a clue.
“There was no help given to those who didn’t understand or didn’t know.”