The Figure June Could Not Hold
The June insolvency figures for UK hospitality were, briefly, a piece of good news. The World Cup had run through the month. Warm weather moved people into pub gardens. The monthly total came in lower than May and lower than June the previous year. The trade press noted the improvement, and it was real: something external had pulled the trading conditions away from the baseline for long enough to shift the numbers.
July's figures arrived in the second week of August. Three hundred and twenty-seven food service and accommodation businesses in England and Wales entered insolvency that month. The highest monthly total since November 2024. Up year-on-year. Saxon Moseley, partner and head of leisure and hospitality at RSM UK, described it as a worrying trend that had been forecast for several months.
It had been forecast because the reasons for June's improvement were legible, and temporary.
What the fixture list gave back
The World Cup ran through June. It moved specific metrics for specific operators: pubs with screens, venues near fan zones, rooms with the right setup for a live match. Those operators had a better June than their cost structure alone would have produced. That is a real lift while the tournament lasts.
July does not have a World Cup. It does not have a fixture that keeps a bar active at nine in the evening because something is at stake on a screen three feet above the taps. The trading conditions that supported June's insolvency figure are not present in July, and the July figures reflect that with precision.
The structural costs that were present in June are present in July unchanged. Employer National Insurance sits where the April increase put it. Wages are at the floor the spring rise confirmed. Business rates run at the levels the April revaluation set. Food costs continue to move against the headline inflation figure that does not capture what a kitchen actually pays for ingredients. None of those inputs respond to the presence or absence of a sporting tournament.
The trend line underneath the months
Three hundred and twenty-seven is a high individual monthly number. But the figure that matters more is the direction. Hospitality insolvencies across 2025 totalled 3,353 for the full year, according to the Morning Advertiser. The monthly average implied by that annual figure sits at roughly 280. July 2026 is running well above that average, in a year when the cost inputs pushing operators toward the edge have not softened.
June suggested, briefly, that the trajectory was improving. July confirms that it was not. The bounce was the tournament. The baseline is the baseline.
What the same room costs in both months
We run kitchens across Sussex. The Castle Inn, Tollgate, the Bull on the Green, the Berwick, and the others in the Coal and Co group. The World Cup gave certain evenings a different energy. The July evenings ran as July evenings run: the kitchen preparing, the floor team on, the cost structure underneath it identical to what it was the month before.
The distinction that matters is not between June and July. It is between a seat that earns something and a seat that earns nothing. That distinction applies the same way in both months.
Around 4pm, when the shape of the evening becomes clear, venues list on Halfseat the tables they expect to lose. Food at half price. Drinks at full price. A real cut of the booking fee going directly to the venue. Not a blanket discount. The seat that was heading toward zero, earning something before service ends.
What August is running against
July's figure is now in the data. August is running alongside the same cost structure that produced it. Brighton's summer trading is real, and the school holidays bring a footfall that changes what a midweek service looks like for a few weeks. But the improvement the sector needs is structural, not seasonal.
Saxon Moseley called the trend worrying. The operators sitting in it knew that already. The month that looked better was the month with a major tournament. The month without one confirmed what the underlying numbers have been saying since April.
The reversal was not a surprise. It was the baseline, coming back.