4 Oxfordshire restaurants at risk of closure with jobs at risk

Whitbread, which owns the Premier Inn hotel chain, has unveiled plans to shed around 3,800 roles in the UK and Ireland.

This will see it phase out its remaining Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants as it redraws its five-year business plan in the wake of tax increases.

The group has poured money into rolling out new Premier Inn hotels across Oxfordshire in recent years.

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Across the country, some of the on-site eateries at these hotels have already been switched over to Whitbread’s own in-house Thyme brand.

Despite this, a number of older Beefeater and Brewers Fayre outlets continue to operate under their original names.

The Beefeaters in Oxfordshire are the Longwall in Cowley, the restaurant serving Kidlington near the airport, and the Applecart Beefeater next to the Premier Inn at Didcot.

There is only one Brewers Fayre left in the county, which is the one based at the Premier Inn in Bicester.

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Roughly 12 per cent of Whitbread’s 30,000-strong workforce in the UK and Ireland are employed in Beefeater and Brewers Fayre sites.

This newspaper contacted the company earlier this week to clarify whether the Oxfordshire locations are included in the planned cuts.

Because the proposal is still under consultation, there was no further local information available specific to the county, revealed a spokesperson.

The spokesperson added: “We appreciate it must be unsettling for those who may be impacted.”