AN annual beer festival opened with sober warnings for the future of the pub trade.

Publicans and campaign groups voiced their concerns at the decline of the community pub at the launch of Colchester Beer Festival.

One publican took out a two-page advert in the festival programme to speak out about the effects of the smoking ban on the pub trade.

Festival organiser David Nunn said many pubs are threatened by tax and rent rises, real ale prices and supermarket competition.

He also said the smoking ban was costing landlords an average of £6,000 a year.

Mr Nunn said: “The cost of providing outside smoking areas has had a major effect on smaller pubs, and there are many where external facilities cannot be offered.

“Landlords should be given the choice to allow smoking should they wish. Non-smokers would have the choice not to enter, although in practice, most pubs would offer smoke-free areas.”

John Parrick, of the Odd One Out in Mersea Road, Colchester, took out a two-page advert in the programme to voice his concern about the smoking ban.

He said: “I can’t speak for other establishments but the Odd One Out has not acquired, of whom I am aware, one single frequent regular as a consequence of the ban.

“I do fear for the trade as we have known it.

“After 22 months of the smoking ban, a customer on his way out to the garden said: ‘This really is becoming quite tedious’.

“I experienced a frisson of nervousness when I heard that word tedium – it’s not what we go to pubs to experience.”

n Colchester pubs which have closed in recent years: the Stockwell Arms, the Blue Boar (Pink Panther), the Bell in Old Heath, the Robin Hood in Osborne Street, the Wig and Fidget in Boxted and the Sun in Lexden Road.