There was sadness in my old neighbourhood of Finsbury Park when the Nicholas Nickleby pub shut its doors a few months ago. The friendly local had been around since the dawn of time, but it was looking a bit shabby, with its carpets proving stickier than the ageing punters. Many of them had either shuffled off to other bars, or shuffled off this mortal coil. It looked to have joined the list of vanished pubs, which is so much longer since the pandemic.
But to everyone’s surprise, the Nickleby reopened over the summer under new management, after a light-touch renovation and a revamped drinks menu. The customer numbers quickly doubled and their average ages halved. Remarkable what a lick of paint and a couple new lagers can do.
It is the latest in something of a mini pubs revival across London. Erstwhile fund manager Jamie Allsopp, who gave up his City career to revive his family’s eponymous old ale brand, is days away from opening his first pub in Notting Hill, while Britain’s best-known pub landlord, Tim Martin of ’Spoons, has unveiled an enormous new site in Waterloo.
But after surviving the darkest days of Covid, London’s pubs now look set to wrestle with a fresh challenge: a ban on smoking in beer gardens to be introduced by the new government, as part of a toughening of legislation first proposed by the previous administration.
The health benefits of such a move are undeniable, though they are unlikely to be as impactful as the ban on indoor smoking introduced nearly two decades ago.
But the economic consequences will be starker still, with the margins of many hospitality businesses already thinner than a cigarette paper. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? For the pub sector, it looks like things will get worse before they get better.
