This page contains data and analysis published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) from 14 to 18 December 2020. Go to our live page for the most up-to-date insights on COVID-19.


More than one in four reporting pub and bar businesses had low or no confidence of surviving the next three months in November

16 December 2020

Data from the latest wave of the Business Impact of Coronavirus Survey (BICS) indicate that a large proportion of responding pub and bar businesses have experienced significant financial difficulty.

Note that the data presented here are unweighted, will not match up with official BICS estimates, and should be treated with caution when used to evaluate the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) across the UK economy.

More than a quarter (27.9%) of pub and bar businesses said that they had low or no confidence in surviving the next three months. This compares with nearly two in ten (19.1%) of responding pub and bar businesses who had high confidence in surviving the next three months.

The figures are based on responses to the Business Impact of Coronavirus Survey (BICS) in Wave 18 (16 to 29 November 2020), and refer to the period 2 to 15 November 2020.

In the same survey, nearly a quarter (23.6%) of responding pub and bar businesses reported that they had no remaining cash reserves or less than one month of cash reserves remaining. This compares with one-fifth (20.6%) of pub and bar businesses reporting more than three months of cash reserves.

Data