Newbury diners saved almost £1m during Eat Out to Help Out scheme

147,000 meals were claimed for across the area

NEWBURY restaurant-goers saved £910,000 during the Government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, it has been revealed.

Around 147,000 meals were claimed for across the constituency according to figures from HMRC, with an average discount of £6.19 per meal.

107 restaurants took part in the scheme, claiming an average of £8,500 each.

Announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a way of boosting the hospitality industry after the first lockdown, the scheme ran throughout August and gave diners a discount of up to 50 per cent off food and soft drinks at participating outlets up to a maximum of £10 per person per meal.

And it proved a huge success for restaurants, pubs and cafes which saw trade boom after months of forced closures.

In North-West Hampshire, diners saved £759,000 through the scheme at an average of £5.99 per meal.

86 outlets took part, with each claiming an average of £8,800.

In Reading West, 47,000 discounted meals were served up at 45 outlets.

The total amount of discount claimed was £255,000 at an average of £5,700 per outlet.

Across England, more than 50,500 restaurant took part, serving up more than 90 million meals and saving diners in excess of half-a-billion pounds. It cost the government an estimated £849m.

It came under fire, though, when the second wave of the pandemic arrived during the autumn with many suggesting it helped spread the virus.

However, the Treasury says research, commissioned by the Sun, proves it not to be the case and that areas in the country with the highest take-up had low infection rates between August and October.

A spokesman said: "These figures confirm that take-up of Eat Out to Help Out does not correlate with incidence of Covid regionally – and indeed where it does the relationship is negative.”