In the gathering dusk of a North Norfolk evening, where the North Sea mists drift in from a cold and indifferent sea, James Nye, 44, whose family has run East Anglian inns for 30 years, stands behind the bar of the White Horse in Holme-next-the-Sea. The pub, a low, Grade II-listed sentinel of stone and brick, flickers beneath strings of fairy lights that feel less festive than quietly defiant. Nye, steward of 10 inns, draws a pint of Adnams Ghost Ship while the low growl of tractors fades along the lanes outside – protest vehicles nursing wounds deeper than any fresh furrow.” “It feels like the Government is piling on pressure at the very moment we need its backing most,” he says to the regulars, farmers and fishermen whose weathered hands cradle glasses that may soon be relics. From April 2025 the measures announced in last autumn’s Budget – employer National Insurance rising to 15%, the threshold slashed from £9,100 to £5,000, the National Living Wage lifted to £12.21 an hour and business-rates relief for hospitality cut from 75% to 40% – have landed on his 10 pubs like a hammer blow, potentially adding £50,000 a year to the ledger of this one alone. In some isolated houses, the rates bill will quadruple overnight – one Cornwall landlady already staring at a jump from £18,500 to £73,000, and a South East pub chain owner facing a £62,000 hit that he says has his business “absolutely at its knees at the moment”.
