Week of tough decisions for landlady ahead of reopening

A SHEFFIELD landlady says she faced a week of tough decisions as Boris Johnson announced pubs could reopen on July 4.

Louise Singleton, landlady of Sheffield’s Kelham Island Tavern, says she has got a little over a week to work out everything from sourcing her beer to training her staff for a whole new world of table service, one-way systems and spaced-out tables.

The pub, which is the only one in the UK to have been named the Campaign for Real Ale’s National Pub of the Year two years running, will reopen now the Government has confirmed the new one-metre-plus social distancing rule, Ms Singleton said.

But she said she now had to look at everything from whether to install screens to how to encourage elderly customers not to sit nursing a half pint all night when customer numbers will be so limited.

Ms Singleton, who has run the award-winning pub with partner Josh Jepson since 2018, said it will be extremely tight financially and very difficult to sustain as a business if the new guidelines are still in place by Christmas.

But she said she is looking forward to seeing many regulars.

Ms Singleton said it has been difficult to plan for reopening until the Government made some firm announcements and she will still need to see the detail of the new guidelines.

She said: “Up to this point we’ve refused to do anything because we don’t want to invest money in something until we actually have it in black-and-white what it is. I have got a little bit set aside in order to do this – screens, PPE, etc.”

The landlady said she felt the Government had mainly listened just to the bigger chains, leaving independent pubs like hers trying to figure out how all the new measures will work in a 170-yearold building with its multiple small rooms and tight corridors.