Pubs are desperate to be open – but they could find out customers aren’t so keen to visit

The hospitality sector needs help, but the government has to be clear about how social distancing will work to give punters the confidence to return, writes Janet Street-Porter

Everyone involved in the hospitality industry is praying that the prime minister will relent and allow them to reopen for business on 4 July (PA)

By the end of the year, will half of our pubs have closed for good?

There’s been a steady decline for years – a quarter of premises have vanished since 2000. Coronavirus could be the death knell for an industry which has been slow to adapt to changing tastes and newer drink-driving laws. Almost a thousand UK pubs shut up shop in 2019, forced out by high rents, competition from microbreweries and wine bars and cheap supermarket booze. Four out of five of us have lost a pub within five miles of our home.

Post-pandemic, will pubs still be an essential part of the British way of life? National treasures to be preserved because they hold communities together? Or outmoded havens for old geezers clutching a beer and whiling away their final years at the bar?