A survey on UKHospitality members found more than half of operators said they have not had a rent reduction from their landlord, despite prolonged periods of closure and over a year of trading restrictions.
Other key findings included over half (52%) have not been given any extension to pay rent and 40% have not been able to reach a deal with their landlord over rent concessions.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said: “The issue of rent debt must be resolved in a way that shares the burden as businesses simply cannot be expected to pay their rent arrears in full.
“This is why the Government must take affirmative action to help hospitality rebuild and play its part in the economic recovery. There has to be a sharing of the pain caused by lockdowns and trading restrictions.
“[The] Government must extend and expand protections until the end of the year, and force the writing off of a fair amount of Covid rent debt. The removal of protections would be disastrous and result in a huge increase in enforcement activity – meaning business failures and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.”
If the current protections that are in place are removed this summer, the analysis estimated a sixth of the remaining hospitality workforce could be lost.