Ale pioneer is accused of £720,000 tax fiddle

A FORMER public schoolboy behind one of the country’s most successful micro-breweries failed to pay £720,000 in tax over three years, a court was told yesterday.

Julian De Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson, 44, launched the London Fields Brewery in August 2011 and ran it with his wife Rosemary Spence, 39. The fledgling business was based in Hackney, north London, and quickly became a success.

Many of the beers were given quirky names such as ‘Love Not War’ and ‘Hackney Hopster’, and were also sold in an onsite bar at the brewery which was housed beneath railway arches.

However, between August 2011 and December 2014, the brewery failed to pay a penny in VAT, Wood Green Crown Court in North London was told.

When the business was raided by Customs officers in 2014, a search of paperwork also found that deductions included in workers’ pay packets – such as income tax, national insurance and student loan repayments – had been retained by the company.

Opening the case, prosecutor Timothy Atkinson said: ‘The defendants made the London Fields Brewery into a very successful business. They were less successful, however, when it came to paying tax.

‘The prosecution allege that both defendants cheated the public revenue. They cheated taxes that total £727,203.’

Whiteway-Wilkinson – who was educated at £33,000-a-year Blundell’s in Tiverton, Devon – and Spence, who live in Stoke Newington, north London, deny three counts of cheating the public revenue and one of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of income tax between 2011 and 2014. The trial continues.