Hospitality bosses demand ALL pubs, restaurants and hotels must be allowed to reopen from April dailymail.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailymail.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
PM will address hard-hit hospitality industry in road map out of lockdown
Expected to allow pubs reopen in May with maximum of two households indoors
Rumours circulating that pubs may be allowed to reopen outdoor-only in April
The move has sparked fears for Britain s 30,000 venues without beer gardens
Pub owners left Government meetings after accused of leaking road map plans
I
f you’re anything like me, your most cherished summer memories are punctuated by music festivals. In my mind, the season is broadly split into two parts, Glastonbury BC and Glastonbury AD, with other festival jaunts forming further sub-divisions. Was that pre- or post-Field Day? Did that happen around the same time we were raving under a motorway bridge at Junction 2? And, hold on, was this before or after we were a few pints to the good and did a little cry when Johnny Marr played There Is A Light That Never Goes Out at All Points East?
The amorphous time blob sometimes known as “2020” was depressingly free of such beer-addled delineations. There were no main-stage epiphanies to cling to, no warm-cider singalongs to hark back to, nothing just a whole lot of unremarkable sameness.
More than a dozen MPs and over 100 event industry executives have signed a letter to the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, copying in prime minister Boris Johnson, calling for him to implement a Government-backed insurance scheme for festival, live music and events or face them disappearing from our fields and cities for good.
The letter, written by DCMS Committee chair Julian Knight MP, follows the 5 January opening hearing of the Committee’s inquiry into the future of UK music festivals, during which festival operators emphasised the urgent need for Government support.
At a crucial point in festival planning schedules, MPs warn that organisers and investors are unable to risk repeating losses sustained in 2020 unless events can be insured against cancellation.