Labour launches ‘devastating’ new attack on pubs

Labour proposes new planning rules that could risk thousands of pubs being turned into flats and takeaways, according to the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra). Camra argues that the changes would limit protections to only the last pub in a village or town, potentially allowing greedy developers to convert other pubs into non-pub uses. The government counters that the changes actually provide protections for pubs for the first time and have set out plans to cut business rates for pubs, freeze their bills, and invest £5bn to give local people powers to buy assets like pubs.