Rip-Off London - Part I

It's been a long, hard day pounding the streets of London seeing the sights, and you pop in to a pub to ask for a soft drink. You are virtually inviting the landlord to write his own cheque. "Pint of lemonade and lime, sir?" That will, depending on where you call in, cost you anything between £1.40 and £2.90.

True, nobody expects a supermarket price - that works out at typically around 63p a pint - despite the fact that many pubs obtain their supplies there. And you may accept that the landlord needs to accommodate heavy overheads in the West End in terms of staff costs and rates. But a more realistic price range would surely see £1.40 at the top rather than the bottom.

Try a stroll between Leicester Square and Covent Garden, calling in at All Bar One in Leicester Square, the Bear and Staff in Charing Cross Road, and the Angel and Crown in St Martin's Lane. We asked, as many thirsty customers do, for a pint of lemonade and lime in each (with a little ice). All Bar One, arguably the best located of the three, charged £1.70. The Bear and Staff charged £2.90. And the Angel and Crown, only £1.40. Prices, in effect, varied by more than double - despite the fact that the pubs are only 300 yards apart.

Elsewhere in central London the variations were just as dramatic, once again with no apparent regard for the quality of the location or the surroundings. At the Blackbird in Earls Court the same pint cost £2.40, but just down the road at the Court-field, it was only £1.53. In the Gloucester, Sloane Street, it went up to £2.70, while at the Captain's Cabin and the Three Crowns in Piccadilly, they wanted £1.61 and £2.17 respectively.

Back in Covent Garden at the Punch and Judy - one of the West End's best-known pubs and located right in the heart of the market - we were back down to £1.82. Even out of the centre of London, at the Greyhound on Kew Green, we were charged £2.20.

The free-for-all on soft drinks is, of course, perfectly within the law, despite the Government's attempts to prevent it. Last November, Consumer Affairs Minister Kim Howells urged the Office of Fair Trading to investigate claims that pubs, hotels, and restaurants routinely charged up to three times more than supermarkets for non-alcoholic drinks, while for beer the mark-up was much less.

However, the OFT decided that the sheer variation in prices - plus the fact that around 500 pubs closed last year - showed that landlords were competing with each other too much to be price-fixing. The sole recommendation was that all pubs should post price lists - those that already did so tended to have lower prices - for which a Government consultation paper is due out soon.

Presented with the results of the Evening Standard's survey, a spokeswoman for the Consumers' Association said: "Profit margins on soft drinks can be as high as 1,000 per cent. This is a clear case of exploiting customers, which is particularly galling as pubs should be cutting soft drink prices to support anti-drink-driving campaigns. The excuse of being in an expensive location, particularly in the West End, doesn't seem to add up from the prices shown here."

The Brewers' and Licensed Retailers' Association chief executive Rob Hayward said it was a matter for individual companies: "As a trade body we don't comment on what prices our members are charging, although it is basically down to individual companies that run pubs as to how much they charge for soft drinks, as it is with alcoholic drinks."

The widely differing charges at the All Bar One and the Bear and Staff are made all the more surprising by the fact that they are owned by the same brewing company, Bass. Neither of the landlords were permitted to speak to the Evening Standard, but company spokesman Bob Cartwright said Bass had revised its soft-drink pricing some time ago in response to criticism.

"We knew there was concern about the price of pub soft drinks in general, so we now have a policy where soft drinks like lemonade and cola are discounted by 20 per cent against the price of Carling Black Label, our biggest-selling beer.

"The Bear and Staff is one of a group of pubs we recently acquired from Allied Domecq, and it appears that our charging policies haven't quite been put into effect there yet.

"But different Bass pubs do charge different amounts - some are very much down-to-earth places with budget prices, whereas others are more upmarket and prices reflect the surroundings."