News

FOUR Perthshire charities are looking forward to a winter windfall thanks to a fund-raising night at the Kenmore Hotel. Over 100 guests attended the Salmon...

THE licensed trade turned out in force last week for the funeral of John Waterson, the pioneering Scottish publican and former president of the...

LESS than one in five people back the UK government’s plans to introduce a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol down south and even...

NEXT month Glasgow’s SECC welcomes the return of ScotHot, the trade show dedicated to Scotland’s catering, tourism, hospitality and foodservice sectors. And this year organisers...

BY his own admission, Jacques Borel doesn’t work as hard as he used to. The veteran French hotel lobbyist puts in a ‘mere’ 70 hours...

Property market picks up pace as licensees snap up opportunities EXPERIENCED operators showed confidence in the UK pub sector last year, taking advantage of reduced...

BREWERS have issued fresh calls for chancellor George Osborne to scrap the alcohol duty escalator in next month’s Budget, claiming it is pushing the price of a pint out of reach for many people. The beer firms say the annual 2% above the rate of inflation increase, brought in by the previous government in 2008 and continued under the coalition, is hampering growth in the sector and contributing to pub closures and job losses.

A CAMPAIGN to levy a tax on sugary drinks is another example of the licensed trade being treated as a “cash cow”, according to one of the UK’s biggest pub chains. JD Wetherspoon says proposals put forward by the charity Sustain would heap pressure on an industry already paying more than its fair share to the Treasury. More than 60 organisations, including Friends of the Earth, the Scottish Cancer Prevention Network and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, have backed a report calling on the government to implement the tax at the next Budget.

FORMER alcohol and tobacco policy chief Mary Cuthbert OBE is to chair the first meeting of Scotland’s new National Licensing Forum later this month. As...

HUNDREDS of small and medium-sized enterprises around the UK, including Scottish hospitality businesses, may be in line for compensation from their banks after an initial probe by the City regulator found widespread mis-selling of products designed to protect businesses from fluctuations in interest rates. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced last July it planned to investigate what it said were “serious failings in the sale of IRHPs” (interest rate hedging products).