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Dear beer

Emma Scott
11/ 8/2005

DRINKERS are paying for massive mark-ups on their pints at pubs in south Manchester.

And there are now enormous differences between what punters will be forced to cough up at pubs across the area for a lager or a standard pint of bitter.

A special league table of pint prices of premium beer and best bitter collected by the Reporter reveals that punters can pay as much as £1 more for exactly the same tipple, depending on the premises.

Drinkers surrounded by wood panelling at the trendy Metropolitan, on Lapwing Lane, West Didsbury, pay a whopping £3.10 for their pint of Stella or other premium lager and £2.60 for best bitter, Boddingtons.

But those getting a round in within the less rarefied confines of the Sedge Lynn, on Manchester Road, Chorlton, will pay £2.10 for the Stella and just £1.30 for a pint of John Smiths.

The Metropolitan even puts pint prices in the capital in the shade, with the whatprice website putting, the average price of a pint of lager in the most expensive of pubs in London at £3.00 and the average at £2.24. The average price for the north west is just £2.03.

Neal Andrews, 31, of Alan Road, Withington, used to be a regular at the Metropolitan when he lived in West Didsbury but has stopped going in recent months because of the steep prices.

He said: "To be honest I don't go there anymore because of the prices. I don't think it's justified to charge that amount for a pint."

Iain Loe, a spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale said: "In the supermarket Stella is a very cheap product but in the pubs they are trying to promote it as reassuringly expensive. It's sending out mixed messages to the customer.

Dan Stoddard, manager of the Sedge Lynn, said: "We are just a part of a large national chain of pubs so we try to keep everything as cheap as we can and good value for money."

Barry Lavin, operations manager at the Metropolitan, said: "It's about the ambience, last year we spent nearly £40,000 on refurbishments to the building, on keeping it it in the condition it was originally, and how much we spend as an independent.

"We are not part of a group that has huge buying power and we have to buy through Enterprise and they charge us 40 pc more than any other independent pub would pay from free trade purchase."

Mr Lavin said that the pub pays over £300,000 in rents and rates each year. He added: "We are doing everything we can to make it a nice experience."