THE price of a pint of some of East Lancashire's favourite beers could rocket by as much as six pence today after brewing giants Whitbread slapped 2.5 per cent on their wholesale cost.

The latest hike comes less than a year after Blackburn-based brewery Daniel Thwaites joined Matthew Brown and Bass to push the price of a pint up by as much as seven pence. Whitbread, which has a plant in Samlesbury, blame spiralling costs for the rise but local landlords and independent brewers claim the increase will damage an already struggling trade.

David Porter, who runs a small brewery and owns The Griffin Inn, Haslingden, and The Albion in Clayton-le-Moors, said: "That's just their excuse for squeezing a bigger profit margin from smaller sales.

"They always blame these rises on costs like staff and raw materials but if anything those costs are going down." Whitbread's Jeremy Probert said: "This increase in wholesale prices was actually announced a month ago. Every single business has to put their prices up and we're doing this to meet staff costs, raw materials and diesel costs which have hit us hard.

"We're not doing this to make life hard for landlords."

Joe Atkinson, landlord of The Bridge, Padiham, and an ex-president of the Licensed Victuallers Association, said he had been in business for 14 years but was considering retiring because of price hikes and rent increases. He said: "They're just profitising. They will carry on putting it up and putting it up until there's no pubs left at all."

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