Speaking on the ITV Peston show he said while the business is coping, he admitted he would have concerns if there were any further increases in taxes in the autumn.
“I would be pretty anxious. Business has borne a lot of the burden and I think the cries of help from business are not artificial. It will be difficult to whack them up again,” he said.
“Our costs are going up by £1.2m a week and it’s a hell of a lot. It is approximately equivalent to our after-tax profits before they went down during the pandemic.”
‘Not everyone will cope’
However, Martin said that operators big and small would be facing challenges.
“Not everyone will cope. Our prices are low, we have some advantages, we have got mostly freehold pubs, our debt is not too high. I think a lot of other people haven’t got all those things going for them and they will struggle more,” he added.
The recent high court ruling over gender, which clarified that gender is biological also raised the issue of toilets in pubs and how JDW would deal with having to offer gender neutral toilets.
Vexed issue
“It’s a vexed issue and I don’t know the answer. I have never been asked it in my 45-year career until it came up as a political issue from nowhere,” he said during the ITV interview.
“I suppose pubs have an advantage in they have a gender-neutral loo anyway, which is the disabled facility in modern pubs. Some of the older ones don’t and they are very difficult and expensive to install. I am just not sure of the answer.
He said he would like the issues around single sex and Trans toilets debated in Parliament and said he would give “Keir” a call.
He also revealed JDW pubs are now installing staff toilets back of house which is a £50m investment for the business.
Talking about Brexit, which he backed, he said that the result is that the UK has the lowest ever unemployment and it has created 1.3m jobs.
“It has been chaos bit somehow democracy works,” he said.
