I have received a reply to my initial letter to Humphrey Smith about Blacksmiths Arms Farlington and Live music if anyone is interested in it in full PM me. I received the reply (handwritten) by return of post which is good.

The gist is that -

1 It is due to PRS costs
2 All pubs are treated the same and they are unwilling to work on a pub by pub basis regardless of consequence
3 "Rightly or wrongly our small brewery's whole strategy and objective is to keep our brewery open and producing and offering secure employment for the very long term" - and that prices have only gone up in line with duty increases since 1990
4 He apologizes

I understand from a friend who spoke to PRS today that the cost per session for something like ours is £7.08 or £368.16 for 52. Each week we have 12-25 people who come (and sometimes more) for about 3-3.5hours. I leave the maths to you but they seem at odds with point 3 above.

I'll see what the response to the next letter is.