Dry January doesn’t mean turning your back on the pub, this is the moment our locals need loyalty, not quiet abandonment

Every year it arrives with the same earnest intentions and the same faintly puritan edge, as if the only way to prove you are serious about self-improvement is to exile yourself from the places where life actually happens. Drink less, feel better, reset the system. All fine.

Sensible, even. But somewhere along the way, Dry January has picked up an unnecessary extra rule, the idea that if you are cutting alcohol you must also cut the pub.

That part needs binning.

December is a big month for most people. Not just financially, although that matters, but emotionally. It is noisy, expensive, social, relentless. It is family and grief and old memories colliding at speed. For a lot of people, the pub is where December is survived.

It is where friendships are maintained, arguments are settled, work is moaned about, football is watched, and loneliness is kept at bay for a few hours at a time.

Come January, when the lights go down and the credit card bills arrive, that role does not suddenly disappear. If anything, it matters more.

The pub is not a drinks delivery system. It is a community hub. It is where we go to celebrate the best days of our lives and where we quietly gather on the worst ones.

It is where birthdays spill over into the street and where wakes end with arms around shoulders and stories told for the hundredth time. It is where people notice when you have not been in for a while.

You do not get that from an app.

Most pubs have clocked this already. Alcohol-free options are no longer a sad bottle of something dusty at the back of the fridge.

Guinness Zero is proof that you can keep the ritual, the glass, the creamy head and the quiet sense of belonging, just without the next-day apology tour.

There are proper alcohol-free lagers, stouts, ciders, grown-up soft drinks that do not taste like punishment, and coffee that is actually worth ordering.

You can sit with your mates, watch the match, have the same conversations, and still wake up clear-headed. This is not a sacrifice. It is an adjustment.

And pubs need that support now more than ever.

Behind the warm glow of January resolutions is a much colder reality. The British Beer and Pub Association has been blunt about what is coming.

Following an emergency summit of sector chiefs, the BBPA has warned that thousands of pubs are facing punishing business rates increases.

Around 4,800 of the smallest pubs will be hit with a business rates bill for the first time. The average community pub is looking at a 63 per cent rise in bills, roughly £6,000 more a year, thanks to higher rateable values and the loss of vital relief.

Some have seen those values double or even triple. Meanwhile, vast distribution warehouses, the kind that quietly hoover up our spending online, face increases of about seven per cent. If that does not tell you how warped the system is, nothing will.

The BBPA is calling for a simple, targeted fix, a 30 per cent pub-specific rates relief. It could protect around 15,000 jobs. Without it, the association says closures will accelerate and communities will lose social hubs that cannot be replaced once they are gone.

These are not abstract numbers. These are landlords, bar staff, chefs, cleaners, glass collectors. These are places that sponsor kids’ teams, host charity raffles, keep an eye on the elderly regular who lives alone.

Once a pub goes, it rarely comes back.

It is also worth pausing to think about the people who made December happen for the rest of us. The staff working Christmas Day.

The ones who missed lunch at home so others could escape theirs for an hour. The teams who handled packed bars, short tempers, and emotional customers with patience and humour.

My local did an amazing job this year. They always do. That effort does not evaporate on New Year’s Day.

So by all means, do Dry January. Drink less. Sleep better. Feel smug about it if you must. Just do not mistake abstinence for absence.

Go to the pub. Order the zero. Tip the staff. Sit in the same seat. Talk to the same people. Keep the habit that actually matters.

If we want pubs to be there for the next celebration, the next funeral, the next spontaneous Tuesday night that turns into something memorable, we have to show up for them now.

Dry January should not mean empty stools and darkened windows. It should mean full rooms, clear heads, and communities that understand what they are about to lose if they treat the local like an optional extra.

________________

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk