Welcome to the first Newsletter of 2024. On behalf of the Durham Committee we would like to wish everyone a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.
As always we would love to hear from our members including those within the hospitality sector promoting real ale, with news, suggestions and pub and beer information from our area. Please e-mail secretary@camradurham.org.uk
We are now inviting Durham Branch members to vote for the CAMRA Durham Pubs and Club of the Year for 2024. The winners* will go forward to the Regional juding round where we have had much success in recent years including the Regional Pub of the Year in 2022 (The Station House in Durham which went on to be crowned one of the 4 best pubs in the UK) and 2023 (The Grey Horse, Consett). We have also seen The Station House in Durham crowned the Regional Cider Pub of the Year.
Update: Due to a failure of the server hosting CAMRA branch websites, some votes from February 1st to 5th may have been lost. If you voted around this time please try to vote again. If your vote was lost the system will allow you to vote again.
As you may be aware, Durham's Station House was one of CAMRA's top 4 pubs in the Country in the 2022 Pub of the Year competition.
It is now time for us to vote for our Branch Pub and Clubs of the Year for 2023 who will hopefully go on to find similar success.
On the 14th July the branch met with Dehenna Davison MP. We are very grateful for Dehenna for making time to meet with us. The discussion was wide ranging, including:
The House of Commons has held a much-needed backbench debate on the hospitality industry. The debate was lively, well attended and involved lots of MPs from the length and breadth of the UK. We were lucky to find four MPs from our branch area on the call paper. Grahame Morris, MP for Easington, Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield, Richard Holden, MP for North West Durham and Mary Kelly Foy, MP for the City of Durham were due to speak.
Before we tell you about this year's AGM we would just like to share a quick thought:
The Branch has recently had a further 2 meetings with our local MPs to talk to them about the difficulties facing the pub, club and brewing industries.
As part of our campaign to support local pubs, brewers and drinkers in the current lockdown and immediate future, a group of CAMRA members met with Kevan Jones MP, the representative for North Durham. In a wide-ranging discussion, Kevan emphasised that he had opposed the 10pm curfew, recognised the central importance of pubs to communities in County Durham and recognised the severe impact that current public health measures are having on all concerned.
On January 22nd, CAMRA Durham hosted a Zoom chat with Richard Holden, the MP for North West Durham, so that we could discuss his stance on all things pub-related and what could be done to promote and protect the industry, particularly during the current pandemic situation.
We have decided that in view of the response to Covid-19 still preventing us from meeting in person, we will hold an AGM Meeting using Zoom on Tuesday 22nd September 2020, at 7-30pm. A link for this meeting will be made available closer to the time.