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.