Hall & Woodhouse cancels rent and suspends loan repayments

The company originally decided to suspend these payments for four weeks, following the Prime Minister’s advice to avoid pubs on Monday 16 March.

However, after the PM then announced all pubs must close on Friday 20 March, Hall & Woodhouse then decided to extend this support for a further four weeks.

Financial support

Hall & Woodhouse head of business partnerships Chris Chapman said: “We are committed to providing our business partners with the financial support and advice needed to help them through this period of uncertainty and felt it was only right to take immediate action.

“We are grateful to the Government for making available employee retention support as well as providing business interruption loans or grants to our business partners, but we feel it is only right that we enhance our help given.

“We know the situation is evolving at speed and we are monitoring the situation closely and will adjust our support according to any advancements.

“We will come through this together and when we do, we want our business partners to have the finances in place to allow them to recover as quickly as possible.”

In the trade

Meanwhile, Admiral Taverns has cancelled rent payments​ for its licensees, effective from Saturday 21 March until Thursday 30 April – an end date that will stay under review.

In a letter to its operators from the pubco’s chief executive officer Chris Jowsey, Admiral also said it was “determined to support” licensees through the Covid-19 outbreak period and it looked forward to the pubs reopening as soon as the virus is under control.

Fellow pub group Fuller’s has also suspended commercial rent​ for its tenants amid the Covid-19 outbreak and will review this as the situation develops.

It is also communicating across its estate on a regular basis through its business development managers.