Supermarkets will take over from pubs and other licensed venues as the biggest sellers of beer within the year as record numbers of pubs close across the country.

According to industry leaders, Britain’s pub industry is in its worst crisis for 70 years as the pressures of the economic downturn, increased beer duty and aggressive marketing of alcohol by supermarkets drive away customers in rapidly growing numbers.

The Timeshas learnt that a powerful lobby of policing, health and licensing industry leaders is to urge the Government to implement pricing controls on the supermarkets to prevent them from using alcohol as a loss leader.

The Government, already under pressure to reduce binge drinking, has commissioned research into the relationship between heavy discounting and irresponsible consumption.

More than two dozen pubs are said to be closing every week and industry analysts predict that that rate could almost double within a year. Since 2000, more than 3,600 pubs have closed in Britain, with many landlords blaming the smoking ban, which came into effect in July 2007, for the reduction in business. Last year, almost seven times as many pubs closed compared with the previous year.

At the same time supermarkets are encroaching into the market and attracting customers with heavy cost cutting. Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, Sainsbury’s was offering 60 284ml bottles of Stella Artois lager for £20, equivalent to 33p per bottle.

In the last quarter, while sales of beer in pubs and restaurants fell by 8.3 per cent, they rose by 5.3 per cent in the off-trade area, which consists mainly of supermarkets.

Leading breweries and the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) told The Times that if current trends continued, the supermarkets were likely to overtake pub sales within the next year. Neil Williams, a spokesman for the BBPA, said that there had been a “consistent and relentless” switch from pubs to retail outlets.

He said that the switch to drinking at home, combined with other issues including the smoking ban, economic problems and a sharp increase in beer duty, had left pubs in “one of the most difficult periods ever”.

Nigel Pollard, a spokesman for Scottish & Newcastle, Britain’s biggest brewery, said that a “tipping point”, where supermarkets overtook pubs, was likely to be reached within the year.

He cautioned against imposing price controls on supermarkets, but said that pubs needed to become more attractive to customers to avoid losing a “very long-standing institution”.

“This also impacts sports and social clubs. It’s very much the fabric of the high street and the way we socialise, and we lose that at our peril.”

John Grogan, a Labour MP and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, told The Times that the Government was being subjected to intense lobbying over the price differential.

Although a floor price for alcohol is likely to be introduced in Scotland, further increasing the pressure on the Government, Mr Grogan said that many ministers were wary about the imposition on big supermarket businesses.

Publicans support price controls and have also called for a freeze on beer duty, which they say is one of the main causes of the exodus of customers from their pubs.

Leading health professionals and police officers, concerned about the social impacts of binge drinking, have also added their voice to calls for greater regulation.

Ian Gilmour, the President of the Royal College of Physicians and chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said that supermarket cost-cutting was having the “biggest single impact on alcohol misuse”.

He added: “We know that the kids who are out there getting drunk and getting involved in crime, or ending up in accident and emergency, are unlikely to be drinking in pubs. Chances are they have been tanked up on cut-price alcohol.”

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, called on the Government to investigate better regulation of the industry because of its “grossly irresponsible” approach to the pricing and marketing of alcohol. “When alcoholic drinks are being sold at a price below water, we are in a really bad place,” he said.

He added that “louts’ runs” existed around many supermarkets because young people could purchase cheap alcohol. “In that zone you find disorder, litter and threatening behaviour that is stimulated by cheap alcohol,” he said.

However, Richard Dodd, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium, said that it was unreasonable for customers to have to pay more in supermarkets because of a “misguided belief” that it would help pubs. “It’s ridiculous to suggest that supermarkets are selling any significant proportion of alcohol at a loss. No business could survive, and certainly not thrive, if they were doing that,” he said.

Mr Pollard added that pricing control was a dangerous move because there were many other factors driving customers away from pubs, including the rise of home entertainment and an unwillingness to travel after dark. “We just have to try and make pubs more attractive,” he said.

Jonathan Mail, head of policy and public affairs for the Campaign for Real Ale, said that price controls would soften the impact of a worsening economy on pubs.

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