Wigan businessman speaks of Covid-19 difficulties after town centre bar temporarily closes

The measures currently in place make the venue unviable, its owner Tony Callaghan said.

The venue had reopened as a bar a few weeks after the hospitality industry as a whole was permitted to resume trading and had done reasonably well, Mr Callaghan said.

But the introduction of a 10pm curfew had reduced demand for Indiependence, which pre-lockdown was known as a live music haunt and nightclub, to almost zero.

Mr Callaghan, who runs Inn The Bar, spoke frankly of the challenges facing the hospitality industry and his numerous watering holes but said he was trying to remain as upbeat as possible.

He said: “Indiependence is a nightclub. It opens until the early hours of the morning. It’s just impossible at the moment. We’ve lost all income on that particular site.

“We opened Indiependence as a bar with table service and it worked well for us, but last Saturday we opened and it was a waste of time, to be honest.

“People just don’t want to go out to a nightclub-type venue that early. We essentially stop taking money at 9.30pm because people have to go at 10pm.

“Indiependence is not closing down, I don’t intend to close any of my businesses. Once the Government restrictions are lifted we can start trading properly again.

“I employ a few hundred people so I’m trying to remain positive. Unfortunately it’s not easy to run a business when the rules are changing on a regular business.

“We’ve just got to hope this doesn’t last too long.”

Mr Callaghan said he thought there had been considerable public confusion about the rules, especially for Wigan which has been under both national and stricter Greater Manchester measures.

He said his business was trying to do what it could to encourage people to support the hospitality sector while still abiding by the regulations, such as offering masks for sale and giving a portion of the money to charity.

He said he was not convinced the 10pm curfew would work but stressed there were no easy answers for keeping the public safe and stopping the coronavirus spreading.

However, he said businesses would find it easier to cope if announcements by the Government were made further in advance of major changes kicking in.

He said: “We’ve got a lot of people going onto the streets at 10pm and that is causing other problems.

“However, I don’t think staggering opening hours would help either as people would try to migrate from bar to bar for one last drink.

“Covid doesn’t stop transmitting at 9.30 at night, it’s there all the time. I do understand that when people have had alcohol they might not social distance from each other.

“I also don’t think people are understanding what they can and can’t do. It’s just very difficult.

“It would be much better for us if we knew that we would be closed in, say, two weeks’ time for two weeks. We could prepare for that.

“When we closed down earlier in the year I had thousands of pounds of beer in and loads of fresh produce because we were coming up to Mothering Sunday, one of our busiest days of the year. We took a massive hit.”