The average price of a pint costs 60p more than British drinkers think is reasonable, a new survey reveals.
A YouGov poll of more than 40,000 Britons has found that the differentiation between pint prices is a little more complicated than a simple north/south divide.
It found that, on average, Brits consider £3 to be the reasonable cost of a pint. However, this is 60p lower than the actual national average.
The situation is even worse in Surrey, where the average price is more than £1 pricier than is considered fair.
Here, residents considered a reasonable price for a pint to be £3.36 but the average was actually £4.40.
The smallest difference between perception and reality is in Herefordshire, which along with Yorkshire, has the cheapest pints in Britain.
In Herefordshire a pint costs £3.31 on average, just 30p more than residents think they should pay, while in Yorkshire, the difference is 47p.
In contrast, residents of Northumbria and Lancashire were found to have the cheapest expectations with both areas considering a reasonable price for a pint to be just £2.80.
“Visitors to London from the wider country are often in for a nasty shock whenever they visit the capital’s pubs,” said Ben Glanville from YouGov.
“Likewise Londoners venturing outside the city limits will be consistently delighted to receive significant change when paying for a pint with a fiver.
“However, our research shows that nowhere in the country do people think they are paying a reasonable price for a pint.”
This comes after figures from the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) found that, despite a rise in overall beer sales of 0.7 per cent in 2017, sales in pubs and bars actually fell by 2.4 per cent – their highest margin since 2013 and the equivalent of Brits drinking 88 million fewer pints than the year before.
The industry body cited higher operating costs for pubs including business rate increases, and sharply rising employment costs as key reasons for the drop in sales.
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