Budget 28 October 2026: what each thing the pub trade is asking for would actually be worth per pint

The Budget is on Wednesday 28 October. Of everything the trade is asking for, only one changes the maths on a pint in a big way. Cutting hospitality VAT from 20% to 10% would be worth about 40p on a £5.34 pint, or roughly £324 a week to a pub selling 800 pints, if you held the price. A duty freeze in February is worth about 1.8p a pint. The 20% rates cut is already promised for April 2027, at about £1,100 a year for a typical pub. And the flat 20p-a-unit duty some are proposing wouldn't make a draught pint any cheaper at all.

Every Budget the trade bodies put out their asks, the papers run "pubs call for" headlines, and nobody does the sum on what each one means behind a bar. So here they are, priced on the average £5.34 pint from the Morning Advertiser's 2026 survey and a pub selling 800 pints a week, which is the middle row I use elsewhere. Every figure is either sourced or marked as my arithmetic.

What's being asked for

The Chancellor, John Healey, confirmed the date on 31 July. In the run-up, the #VATsTheProblem campaign delivered a petition with 401,250 signatures to Downing Street on 14 October asking for hospitality VAT to come down to 10%. UKHospitality has also asked for a cut to employer's National Insurance, saying the sector has taken more than £5bn of extra costs in two years. The government has already committed to a 20% business rates cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues from April 2027, with the detail due at the Budget. And a new Adam Smith Institute report, covered by the Morning Advertiser on 16 October, proposes a flat duty of 20p per unit of alcohol.

The Chancellor said on 15 October that he'd give businesses "a bit of breathing space". No hospitality measures were announced alongside it.

Each ask, priced on one pint and one week

The ask	On a £5.34 pint	On 800 pints a week	Status
Hospitality VAT 20% to 10%	About 40p, if you hold the price	About £324 a week, £16,800 a year	Asked for. Not promised
Freeze alcohol duty in February 2027	About 1.8p of duty, 2.2p with VAT on it	About £14 a week, £750 a year	Asked for. Default is an RPI rise
Business rates 20% cut from April 2027	Not per pint. About £1,100 a year for a typical pub	About £21 a week, nine pints' worth of gross profit	Promised. Detail at the Budget
Employer's NI cut by one point	Not per pint	About £2.22 a week for each 25-hour bar job at £12.71	Asked for. No size given
Flat 20p per unit duty	A 4.5% draught pint goes up about 1.4p	Cuts land on spirits and wine instead	Think-tank proposal

All of the pence and pounds in that table are my arithmetic from the sources at the bottom, except the £1,100 rates saving, which is the government's own estimate for a typical pub.

VAT: the only one that's big

VAT at 20% is a sixth of whatever the customer pays. On £5.34 that's 89p. At 10% it would be an eleventh, 48.5p. That's 40p a pint the pub keeps if the shelf price stays put, and because the beer cost doesn't change, every penny of it is gross profit. At a 55% wet GP the pub keeps about £2.45 of that pint now. At 10% VAT, same price, it's about £2.85. That's a 16% rise in the gross profit on every pint, from one line in a speech.

The other way to use it is to pass it on. Take the full cut off the shelf price and that £5.34 pint becomes £4.90. Which happens to be the average pint in the North East already. So the question if it comes is how much you keep and how much you give back, and I'd want to see the start date and whether it's food, drink or both before deciding anything.

It's also worth knowing what VAT does to duty. The 49.7p of duty on a 4.5% pint gets VAT charged on top of it, about 10p, a tax on a tax that the customer pays. A VAT cut takes half of that off too. I set out the full pint anatomy in the average price of a pint, and VAT on the rest of the bar in what a pub pays in VAT.

Duty: small per pint, bigger per keg

Alcohol duty goes up every 1 February in line with RPI unless the Budget says otherwise. Last February it was 3.66%. Draught beer from 3.5% to 8.4% is now £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol, 49.7p on a 4.5% pint. If February 2027 brought the same 3.66% again, that's 1.8p more duty a pint, about £1.60 more on a 50-litre keg, and 2.2p at the bar once VAT goes on.

On 800 pints a week the duty part is about £14 a week, £750 a year. A freeze saves that. It's real money, but it's under a tenth of the cheapest published Sky bill in my Sky Sports guide, and it's a rounding error next to the VAT ask. The full rate tables are in the alcohol duty guide.

Business rates: already in the bag, mostly

The 20% cut from April 2027 has been announced. The government says it'll help around 32,000 venues and save a typical pub about £1,100 a year. That's £21 a week, roughly nine pints' worth of gross profit at £2.45 a pint. What's still open is who qualifies and where the cut-off for bigger venues sits, which the Budget is meant to set out. If your rateable value is on the high side, don't bank it until that's published. The business rates relief guide has how the reliefs stack.

National Insurance: depends who's on your rota

Employer's National Insurance is 15% on earnings over £96 a week. Take a bar job at the £12.71 National Living Wage for 25 hours, £317.75 a week. The NI on that is about £33 a week. Every one point off the rate saves about £2.22 a week on that job. Five jobs like it and a two-point cut is worth about £22 a week, near enough the same as the rates cut.

Two catches. If your Employment Allowance already wipes out your whole NI bill, which it does for plenty of small pubs, a rate cut is worth nothing to you. And nobody's said how big a cut they want, so I can't price the ask itself, only what each point is worth.

The flat 20p a unit: read the small print

The Adam Smith Institute's idea is a single duty of 20p per unit, with the Morning Advertiser reporting it would cut the duty pubs pay on a double gin and tonic from 68p to 28p and halve it on wine. One unit is 10ml of pure alcohol, so 20p a unit is £20 per litre of pure alcohol.

Here's the bit nobody mentioned. Draught beer already pays £19.45 a litre under draught relief. So at a flat 20p a unit, a 4.5% draught pint, which is 2.56 units, would pay about 51p instead of 49.7p. Draught gets very slightly dearer, not cheaper. The gains would all be on spirits, which pay £33.99 a litre now, and wine. A single 25ml of 40% spirit is one unit, so 34p of duty would become 20p. On my sums a 50ml double at 40% would be 40p, not 28p, so the report must assume something beyond the headline rate. I haven't seen the full paper, so I'll leave it at that.

For a cocktail-led bar that's a good deal. For a wet-led local where most of the money is in draught, it's no help, and it takes away the gap that makes draught the cheapest way to sell alcohol. I'd want to see draught relief kept before I signed up to it.

My take

If the trade gets one thing, it should be VAT, because it's the only ask that moves the pint by more than a couple of pence. Everything else on the list is worth having and none of it changes a pub's year. The rates cut is already promised, and the duty freeze is about £14 a week.

Whatever happens, don't rush to move your prices on the day. Duty changes in February and rates in April 2027. VAT, if it moves at all, starts whenever they say. Wait for the dates, then do your sums with your own pint prices and volumes. I'll be writing up what actually changes on the day, priced the same way.

Common questions

When is the 2026 Budget?

Wednesday 28 October 2026. The Chancellor, John Healey, confirmed the date on 31 July 2026.

How much would a VAT cut to 10% save a pub per pint?

On a £5.34 pint, VAT at 20% is 89p and at 10% would be about 48.5p, so roughly 40p a pint the pub keeps if it holds the price. Passed on in full, the pint would fall to about £4.90.

How much would a duty freeze save a pub?

If February 2027's uprating matched last year's 3.66%, a freeze saves about 1.8p of duty on a 4.5% draught pint, about £1.60 on a 50-litre keg, or about £750 a year for a pub selling 800 pints a week.

Is the business rates cut for pubs confirmed?

The government has committed to a 20% business rates cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues from April 2027, saving a typical pub about £1,100 a year. Eligibility details are due at the Budget.

Would a flat 20p per unit alcohol duty make a pint cheaper?

Not a draught pint. Draught beer already pays £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol, about 19.45p a unit, so a flat 20p a unit would add about 1.4p to a 4.5% draught pint. The cuts would fall on spirits and wine.