by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Pub chain J D Wetherspoon is to create 10,000 jobs over the next five years.
It says it is going to open 250 new outlets as part of a £250million investment programme.

The new pubs will be located across the UK. Wetherspoons already operates around 20 pubs in Kent - out of 743 nationwide - and the five-year expansion plan could add to that number.

Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said: "Our pubs are extremely popular and we wish to build on their success by opening more. I am confident that the new pubs will be an asset to their respective towns and cities."

Wetherspoons typically buys up older properties and refurbishes them. Aggressive pricing has proved a winning formula.

With an estimated 50 pubs closing every week across the country, the ambitious company which recently reported record sales despite the recession may see opportunities for some good deals, as well as rescuing threatened outlets in prime town centre locations.

Representatives of the beer industry, including Jonathan Neame, chief executive of Shepherd Neame, the 300-year old Faversham brewery, cite high taxes on beer as one of the reasons why so many pubs are closing.

They have called on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to cut duty on beer. Mr Neame claimed recently that excessive beer taxes had made Britain a "vodka-consuming" nation.

"Every time he puts up duty on beer, he’s destroying jobs," he said. But not, it seems, at J D Wetherspoon.