Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many licensed stills have (a) been established and (b) ceased trading in each of the last 10 years.
HMRC licenses the businesses who use stills for distillation rather than the stills themselves. The number of licences issued in each year was:
2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
9 | 2 | 6 | 34 | 11 | 28 | 38 | 34 | 46 | 62 |
HMRC has no information on the number of licensed businesses that have ceased trading.