JW Lees managing director William Lees-Jones reported profit before tax for the year stood at £7.1m (2024: £7.1m), turnover increased to £99.9m (2024: £95.8m) while the group’s net assets increased to £102m (2024: £98m).
The brewer and pub operator invested £11m of capital expenditure during the year (2024: £8m) and sold one pub – the Park in Wythenshawe – which Lees-Jones said “was once one of the company’s best pubs” but did not believe it was sustainable into the future and is now being developed into housing.
Citing the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine plus the cost-of-living rise and Rachel Reeves’ Autumn Budget in 2024, Lees-Jones bemoaned the introduction of “several fiscal measures”, including hikes to employer national insurance contributions, national living wage and changes to UK inheritance tax that will remove the benefit of 100% business relief (BPR) for family-owned businesses such as JW Lees.
He said: “JW Lees feels aggrieved the Government would want to disadvantage UK businesses at a time when the business environment is fragile enough with unemployment rising and the UK needs to offer domestic businesses incentives to grow the economy rather than taxing them to the hilt.
“These changes also hand a competitive advantage to overseas competitors and private equity owned companies when compared to UK-based companies.”
Retail sales up 10.8%
In the current year’s first 38 weeks, JW Lees has seen retail sales up 10.8% on the back of a hot summer with the bottom line up by more than 10%.
Lees-Jones said: “We were lucky with the weather in the early part of the year but we brew great beers and have great pubs run by great people and that’s why we’re outperforming the market.
“The increased costs that the Chancellor imposed on us in her two Budgets mean the business will inevitably be less profitable and so we need to be cautious and focus on productivity.
“We are calling on the Chancellor to put measures in place to support hospitality and family businesses since we need incentives to invest and grow and at the moment we are spending too much time worrying about tax and succession rather than investing in our business and creating new jobs.”
He added that despite the fiscal headwinds continued careful cost and financial management has helped the business – that brews beers such as Bitter 4% ABV, Manchester Pale Ale 3.7% ABV and Manchester Craft Lager 4.7% ABV – grow steadily to achieve record sales and maintain profitability.
Budget offered nothing
“The company needs to deal with the consequences and the implications of the Chancellor’s Budget and this position has been exacerbated by the more recent November 2025 Budget, which offered nothing for the brewing and hospitality sector apart from more taxation,” Lees-Jones stated.
“The long-promised reform of UK business rates has not been delivered and this will penalise pubs and be bad for the UK High Street with many pubs inevitably having to close for economic reasons.
“It is no wonder that more than 100,000 hospitality sector jobs have been lost in the past 12 months.”
Since the year-end, JW Lees has relaunched Boddingtons cask beer to “great acclaim through a licensing deal with Budweiser Brewing Group” and, in the new year, distribution for Boddingtons will grow from JW Lees’ heartland.
The business extended its trial of a new Retail Agreement, which began in 2023-24 and despite the death of Simon ‘Si’ Lees-Jones, who worked for the company for 31 years, it plans to “grow predominantly” by investing in its existing estate and acquire freehold pubs, inns and hotels in the north-west when applicable.
JW Lees employs more than 1,600 people, 150 at the brewery and site in Middleton Junction, north Manchester, and over 1,375 in its 49 managed pubs, inns and hotels. JW Lees also lets another 87 pubs to JW Lees Pub Partners.
