Henry Conlon, Tom Maloney and Bob Dear at the Dublin Castle on Wednesday

LANDLORDS say the rising cost of a pint in London is a symptom of how tough it is to run a pub. Prices vary from venue to venue but the average pint of beer in the capital is £5.90.

While boutique craft beers have long been a byword for exorbitant prices, “popular” or mainstream brands of lager now regularly break the £7 ceiling in some areas of London.

Speaking after a meeting of Camden’s pub landlords on Wednesday, Dublin Castle owner Henry Conlon said soaring overheads were behind the higher prices. “You have to pay your bills,” he said. Tom Maloney of the Oxford Arms said his bills had gone up by 300 per cent since the so-called “energy crisis” began, following the start of war in Ukraine. Mr Maloney said: “You have your utilities, your staff wages, rents, bills.”

The cost of beer production has also increased in recent months, with prices across the entire supply chain – from the cost of raw ingredients like wheat and barley to energy bills – on the up. Many employers in the city also now pay their staff the London Living Wage, which stands at £13.15 an hour.

“People have got to live,” Mr Maloney said. “We’re not complaining, that’s just the way it is. [Running a pub] is a way of life.” He said there were also a range of other costs pub landlords were having to meet, including investment in street decorations outside their businesses. But it’s not all bad news, Mr Maloney said, adding: “In recessions, instead of going out to a nice restaurant people sometimes go out to a pub for a couple of pints, instead of spending £200 on a meal.”

Mr Maloney said that customers sometimes compared the cost of beer in supermarkets and off-licences to the cost of buying a pint in the pub. But he said: “If you buy alcohol from a shop, they don’t pay rents, they don’t pay the Late Night Levy.”

The Late Night Levy is a fee charged by the council to any premises which serves alcohol between midnight and 6am, and can cost anywhere between £299 and £1,493 – a cost businesses still had to cover during the pandemic, when opening hours were tightly restricted by the government.

Off-licences do not have to pay for bouncers or security staff and, during the meeting, Mr Conlon said: “My pet hate is the off-licences, because they don’t have to abide by any rules, really: the litter, the anti-social behaviour.”

Sergeant Rob Pike said the Camden Town Centre Team’s capacity to deal with anti-social behaviour was temporarily reduced “because, unfortunately, what’s happening in central London is drawing resources from everywhere, but hopefully in a couple of weeks, it will have calmed down.” There have been demonstrations in central London in recent weeks relating to the Middle East conflict and Just Stop Oil.