Yahoo Finance Surrey is now the most expensive place to buy a pint in the UK
Surrey has topped the rankings for the most expensive place to buy a pint of beer in the UK, overtaking London for the first time.
Pub-goers in Surrey now have to shell out £4.40 for a pint of beer, compared to £4.20 in the capital, The Good Pub Guide’s 2018 edition has revealed.
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The annual survey of national drink prices showed that the cost of pint now varies by a massive £1.09 between the cheapest and most expensive parts of the country, with Herefordshire and Yorkshire the top destinations for pub patrons to get the best bang for their buck at £3.31 a pint.
A pint of beer now costs an average of £3.47 across the UK – a substantial increase of 13p up from last year.
Good Pub Guide editor Fiona Stapley said that brewers and pubs have been dealt a huge blow by the Chancellor’s move to increase duty on beer for the first time in five years, meaning prices have been passed on to customers.
“There are also increases right across the food and drink industry that include higher wage bills as a result of the national living wage increase last year, rocketing business rates (some pubs are seeing rises of over 200%), higher costs of raw materials, and inflation due to the depreciation of sterling as a result of Brexit,” she explained.
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“The worry here is that as pub goers are hit hard in their pockets, trade will suffer and pub closures will continue – at the moment the average rate of pub closures is 21 a week.”
However, the new growing wave of pubs brewing their own beer is saving customers money, paying just £3.09 a pint, 51p less than the national average.
The Good Pub Guide has broken down the cost of a jar according to region, in average price order:
Bargain beer
Herefordshire (£3.31), Yorkshire (£3.31), Shropshire (£3.33), Derbyshire (£3.36), Cumbria (£3.38), Worcestershire (£3.38)
Fair-priced beer
Northumbria (£3.40), Wales £3.42), Leicestershire (£3.47), Northamptonshire (£3.48), Staffordshire (£3.48)
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Average-priced beer
Lancashire (£3.50), Dorset (£3.51), Devon (£3.51), Somerset (£3.52), Lincolnshire (£3,55), Cornwall (£3.55), Wiltshire (£3.56), Gloucestershire (£3.60), Suffolk (£3.61), Cambridgeshire (£3.61), Essex (£3.62), Warwickshire (£3.64), Bedfordshire (£3.64), Nottinghamshire (£3.65), Hampshire (£3.66), Norfolk (£3.66), Cheshire (£3.66), Scotland (£3.67)
Expensive beer
Isle of Wight (£3.73), Oxfordshire (£3.74), Buckinghamshire (£3.75), Kent (£3.78), Berkshire (£3.78), Scottish Islands (£3.80), Hertfordshire (£3.81), Sussex (£3.82)
Rip-off beer
London (£4.20), Surrey (£4.40)
