Will patio heaters go up in smoke?
Ban on outdoor heaters could cost trade £25Om a year
Pubs face the prospect of a ban on patio heaters that could cost the trade £250m a year in lost outside dining.
Euro MPs voted in favour of adopting Lib Dem MEP Fiona Hall's report on energy efficiency, which "urges the Commission to establish timetables for the withdrawal from the market of all the least energy-efficient items of equipment, appliances and other energy-using products, such as patio heaters".
A ban could ultimately apply to a range of heaters, including electrical devices, if the Commission is persuaded they are not energy efficient.
Moves away from patio heaters from retailers has already begun. B&Q, Currys and garden centres Wyevale and Notcutts will stop selling them once stocks run out.
A European Commission spokesman moved to dampen fears that a ban is inevitable or imminent. He said the EC would now consider what action to take.
"Nothing is certain at all. This is about getting the issue on the agenda and saying this is our vision for the future. I would say to pub landlords it will be some years down the line before something happens, if it happens at all."
But Robert Humphreys,
secretary of the British Beer
Club in the European Parlia-ment, said: "I would have thought that the pressure on these kinds of devices is highly likely to be unstoppable.
"If the European Parliament has got its teeth into it I would have thought it would be very hard for the Commission to resist, although I would think there will be quite a lead time in implementation [of a ban].
"As far as smoking shelters are concerned, people might have invested a lot of money and found it's been wasted."
Nigel Evans MP, vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, has tabled an Early Day Motion saying any decision to ban heaters should be taken by individual nations and "calls on the British Government to protect the pub industry by ignoring the call to ban these heaters".
Shepherd Neame retail director Nigel Bunting said a ban was "entirely unnecessary". "Our pubs use electrical radiant heaters, which only heat the body, not the air, and create just 10% of the emissions given out by gas heaters.
"Now that customers are not permitted to smoke inside, we are keen to provide the best possible facilities outside. All of us want a safe and responsible leisure environment, but to ban these devices without good reason is an over-reaction."
Host Mark Cassidy, of the Walnut Tree in Mere, Wiltshire, said a ban "would affect us because we have a large outside area. It's an easy target. I think there are an awful lot of things causing problems to the environment rather than patio heaters."
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